He became First Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party in 1954 - General Secretary from April 1981 - and remained on this position for 35 years, until 1989, thus becoming the longest-serving leader of any Eastern Bloc nation after the World War II,[1] and one of the longest ruling non-royal leaders in modern history. His rule marked a period of unprecedented political and economic stability for Bulgaria, marked both by complete submission of Bulgaria to Soviet directives[2] and a desire for expanding ties with the West, his rule remained unchallenged until the deterioration of East-West relations in the 1980s, when a stagnating economic situation, a worsening international image and growing careerism and corruption in the BCP weakened his positions.[3] He resigned on 10 November 1989, under pressure by senior BCP members due to his refusal to recognize problems and deal with public protests.[4] Within a month of Zhivkov's ouster, Communist rule in Bulgaria had effectively ended, and within nearly a year the People's Republic of Bulgaria had formally ceased to exist.

Zhivkov was born in the Bulgarian village of Pravets into a peasant family of Romanian origin; in 1928, he joined the Bulgarian Communist Youth Union (BCYU), an organisation closely linked with the Bulgarian Workers Party (BWP) – later the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP). The following year he obtained a post at the Darzhavna pechatnitsa, the official government publisher in Sofia; in 1932, he joined the BWP proper, later serving as secretary of its Second Borough Committee and as a member of its Sofia County Committee. Although the BWP was banned along with all other political parties after the uprising of 19 May 1934, it continued fielding a handful of non-party National Assembly Deputies and Zhivkov retained his posts at its Sofia structure.

During World War II, Zhivkov participated in Bulgaria's resistance movement against the country's alignment with Nazi Germany and was sympathetic to the country's 50,000 Jews;[5] in 1943, he was involved in organising the Chavdar partisan detachment in and around his place of birth, becoming deputy commander of the Sofia operations area in the summer of 1944. Under his rule, many fellow former combatants with Chavdar were to rise to positions of prominence in Bulgarian affairs, he is said to have coordinated partisan movements with those of pro-Soviet army units during the 9 September 1944 uprising.

After 9 September 1944, Zhivkov became head of the Sofia police force, restyled as the Narodna Militsiya (People's Militia), he was elected to the BCP Central Committee as a candidate member in 1945 and a full member in 1948. In the run-up to the 1949 treason trial against Traicho Kostov, Zhivkov criticised the Party and judicial authorities for what he claimed was their leniency with regard to Kostov, this placed him in the Stalinisthardline wing of the Party. In 1950, Zhivkov became a candidate member of the BCP Politburo, then led by Vulko Chervenkov, leading to a full membership in 1951; in the years which followed, he was involved in countering countryside resistance to forced farm collectivisation in northwestern Bulgaria.

After Joseph Stalin's death, an emphasis on shared leadership emerged, the hardline Stalinist Chervenkov gave up his post as General Secretary of the BCP in 1954. Zhivkov took his place, but Chervenkov retained most of his powers as prime minister. Bulgarian opinion at the time interpreted this as a self-preservation move by Chervenkov, since Zhivkov was a less well known figure in the party, after Nikita Khrushchev delivered his famous secret speech against Stalin at the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 20th Congress, a BCP Central Committee plenary meeting was convened in April 1956 to agree to adopt a new Krushchevite line. At that plenum, Zhivkov criticized Chervenkov as a disciple of Stalin, had him demoted from prime minister to a cabinet post, and promoted former Committee for State Security (CSS) head Anton Yugov to the post of prime minister. It was at this point that he became the de facto leader of Bulgaria. Subsequently, Zhivkov was associated with the "April Line," which had anti-Stalinist credentials, at the BCP 8th Congress in late 1962, Zhivkov accused Yugov of anti-Party activity, expelled him from the BCP and had him placed under house arrest.

With the increasingly strengthening positions of Zhivkov as the country's and Communist party's leader, former partisan leaders and active military, took a critical stance on the revisionist policies of the communist leadership; in the events described as the "April Conspiracy" of 1965 or the "Plot of Gorunia," general Ivan Todorov-Gorunia, general Tzviatko Anev (Цвятко Анев) and Tzolo Кrastev (Цоло Кръстев) organized group of high-ranking military officers planning to overthrow the regime. Their plan was to establish a pro-Chinese leadership in the country, the coup was exposed and between 28 March and 12 April 1965 and most of the plotters were arrested.

As prime minister, Zhivkov then held both of Bulgaria's leading political and government posts; for nearly all of Bulgaria's existence as an independent nation, the prime minister has been reckoned as the country's leading political figure. Though the post of head of state was traditionally reserved for the leader of the surviving pro-Communist faction of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, the "Zhivkov Constitution" adopted by referendum in July 1971 promoted him to chairman of the new State Council. The post, equivalent to that of president, confirmed his position as the country's top leader. Zhivkov remained faithful to Moscow during his 35 years in power, but adopted a more liberal stance than his predecessor by allowing some market reforms (such as allowing surplus agricultural goods to be sold for profit) and ending persecution of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

In the mid-1950s, Soviet-style centralized planning produced economic indicators showing that Bulgarians were returning to their prewar lifestyle in some respects: real wages increased 75%, consumption of meat, fruit, and vegetables increased markedly, medical facilities and doctors became available to more of the population, and in 1957 collective farm workers benefited from the first agricultural pension and welfare system in Eastern Europe.[6]

In 1959 the Communist Party borrowed from the Chinese Great Leap Forward to symbolize a sudden burst of economic activity to be injected into the Third Five-Year Plan (1958–1962), whose original scope was quite conservative. According to the revised plan, industrial production would double and agricultural production would triple by 1962; a new agricultural collectivization and consolidation drive would achieve great economies of scale in that branch; investment in light industry would double, and foreign trade would expand.[6] Following the Chinese model, all of Bulgarian society was to be propagandized and mobilized to meet the planning goals.[6] Two purposes of the grandiose revised plan were to keep Bulgaria in step with the Soviet bloc, all of whose members were embarking on plans for accelerated growth, and to quell internal party conflicts. Amalgamation of collective farms cut their number by 70 percent, after which average farm acreage was second only to the Soviet Union among countries in Eastern Europe.[7] Zhivkov, whose "theses" had defined the goals of the plan, purged Politburo members and party rivals Boris Taskov (in 1959) and Anton Yugov (in 1962), citing their criticism of his policy as economically obstructionist. Already by 1960, however, Zhivkov had been forced to redefine the impossible goals of his theses.[6] Lack of skilled labor and materials made completion of projects at the prescribed pace impossible. Harvests were disastrously poor in the early 1960s; peasant unrest forced the government to raise food prices; and the urban dissatisfaction that resulted from higher prices compounded a crisis that broke in the summer of 1962. Blame fell on Zhivkov's experiments with decentralized planning, which was totally abandoned by 1963,[6] despite this, by 1960 the value produced by heavy industry matched that of light industry, and food processing for export grew rapidly.[7] Throughout the second phase, budget expenditures consisted primarily of reinvestment in sectors given initial priority, the completion of collectivization in 1958 had shifted 678,000 peasants, about 20 percent of the active labor force, into industrial jobs.[7]

Large-scale industrialization caused many laborers to move from rural to urban areas, which required the construction of numerous pre-fabricated apartment buildings such as this one in Sofia

By the early 1960s, however, changes to the system were obviously needed to achieve sustained growth in all branches of production, including agriculture.[8] Specific incentives to reform were shortages of labor and energy and the growing importance of foreign trade in the "thaw" years of the mid-1960s. Consequently, in 1962 the Fourth Five-Year Plan began an era of economic reform that brought a series of new approaches to the old goal of intensive growth;[8] in industry the "New System of Management" was introduced in 1964 and lasted until 1968. This approach intended to streamline economic units and make enterprise managers more responsible for performance; in June 1964, about fifty industrial enterprises, mostly producers of textiles and other consumer goods, were placed under the new system. Wages, bonuses, and investment funds were tied to enterprise profits, up to 70% of which could be retained.[9] Outside investment funds were to come primarily from bank credit rather than the state budget; in 1965 state subsidies still accounted for 63% of enterprise investment funds, however, while 30% came from retained enterprise earnings and only 7% from bank credits.[9] By 1970 budget subsidies accounted for only 27% of investment funds, while bank credits jumped to 39%, and retained enterprise earnings reached 34%,[9] the pilot enterprises did very well, earning profits that were double the norm.[9] By 1967 two-thirds of industrial production came from firms under the new system, which by that time had embraced areas outside consumer production.[9]

Zhivkov's reforms resulted in some expansion of trade with the West, as evidenced by licensed Coca-Cola production since the 1960s with a Cyrillic logo

Before the end of the 1960s, however, Bulgarian economic planning moved back toward the conventional CPE approach. Many Western analysts attributed the Bulgarian retreat from the reforms of the 1960s to tension caused by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. International events may well have played a role, but the timing of the retreat and the invasion suggest another component: dissatisfaction among the Party elite with the results and ideological implications of the reform,[10] for example, in July 1968, one month before the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria's unorthodox, three-tiered pricing system was eliminated. The party leadership had never accepted the concept of free and flexible pricing for some products, which was an important Bulgarian departure from centralized planning in the 1960s.[10] Resistance to reform was further encouraged by a series of cases in which major enterprise directors used newly decentralized financial resources to line their own pockets.[10] However, some of the recentralization measures, such as the creation of an agricultural-industrial complex, also received domestic criticism.[11] Both Western and domestic customers remained dissatisfied with the quality of many Bulgarian manufactures. Party meetings and the press criticized monopolistic abuses resulting from irrational decisions at the top and poor implementation of rational policies at the enterprise level.[11]

After a relative stagnation in the 1970s, the New Economic Model (NEM), instituted in 1981 as the latest economic reform program, seemingly improved the supply of consumer goods and generally upgraded the economy;[12] in an effort to remedy the chronic distribution problems of the central economy, higher economic institutions became financially accountable for damage inflicted by their decisions on subordinate levels.[13] Complexes or associations were given explicit freedom to sign their own contracts with suppliers and customers at home and abroad.[13] However, NEM was unable to drastically improve the quality or quantity of Bulgarian goods and produce; in 1983 Zhivkov harshly criticized all of Bulgarian industry and agriculture in a major speech, but the reforms generated by his speech did nothing to improve the situation.[12] A large percentage of high-quality domestic goods were shipped abroad in the early 1980s to shrink Bulgaria's hard-currency debt, and the purchase of Western technology was sacrificed for the same reason, crippling technical advancement and disillusioning consumers, the NEM proved to be a failure, and GNP growth between 1981 and 1982 was only 2.9%.[14] By 1984 Bulgaria was suffering a serious energy shortage because its Soviet-made nuclear power plant was undependable and droughts reduced the productivity of hydroelectric plants.[12] Bulgaria marked significant progress in scientific research by sending two men in space and supplying 70% of all electronics in the Eastern Bloc,[15] but infrastructure remained poorly developed well into the late 1980s.[16]

In 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev visited Bulgaria and reportedly pressured Zhivkov to make the country more competitive economically, this led to a Bulgarian version of the Soviet perestroika program. After a round of failed experimental measures, in January 1989 the Party issued Decree Number 56, this decree established "firms" as the primary unit of economic management.[14] In a fundamental departure from the socialist prohibition of private citizens hiring labor, as many as ten people could now be hired permanently, and an unlimited number could be hired on temporary contracts,[14] this last round of reforms by the Zhivkov regime confused rather than improved economic performance. However, statistics on growth for 1986-88 still indicated a 5.5% annual rate, up from the 3.7% rate achieved during the previous five-year plan.[14]

Zhivkov's social policies resulted in Bulgaria having Gini coefficient of 18 in the 1970s, ranking among the countries with the lowest levels of income inequality in the world

Even before Zhivkov, Bulgaria made significant progress in increasing life expectancy and decreasing infant mortality rates. Consistent social policies led to an increase in life expectancy to 68.1 years for men and 74.4 years for women.[17] In 1939 the mortality rate for children under one year had been 138.9 per 1,000; by 1986 it was 18.2 per 1,000, and in 1990 it was 14 per 1,000, the lowest rate in Eastern Europe.[17] The proportion of long-lived people in Bulgaria was quite large; a 1988 study cited a figure of 52 centenarians per 1 million inhabitants. One of the first mass HIV testing programs was initiated under Zhivkov, and as of October 1989, some 2.5 million people in Bulgaria, including about 66,000 foreigners, had been tested for HIV, and 81 Bulgarians were diagnosed as HIV positive.[17] Increases in real incomes in agriculture rose by 6.7 percent per year during the 1960s. During this same period, industrial wages increased by 4.9 percent annually.[18] Availability of consumer durables significantly improved in the 1970s. According to official statistics, between 1965 and 1988 the number of televisions per 100 households increased from 8 to 100; radios increased from 59 to 95; refrigerators from 5 to 96; washing machines from 23 to 96; and automobiles from 2 to 40. Available automobiles were primarily Soviet Fiats, some of which were manufactured in Bulgaria.[18]

In the postwar era, and especially under Zhivkov, housing in Bulgaria improved significantly as more and better-quality homes were built.[19] However, many of them were cramped - the average home in Bulgaria had three rooms and an area of 65 square meters.[19] Housing remained one of the most serious shortcomings in the Bulgarian standard of living throughout Zhivkov's rule. Residential construction targets in the Five-Year Plans were regularly underfulfilled. Consequently, families often waited several years for apartments; in Sofia, where overcrowding was at its worst, the wait was as long as ten years.[18]

The educational system, despite the addition of ideological subjects, remained relatively unchanged after the beginning of the Communist era; in 1979 Zhivkov introduced a sweeping educational reform, claiming that Marxist teachings on educating youth were still not being applied completely.[20] Zhivkov therefore created Unified Secondary Polytechnical Schools (Edinni sredni politekhnicheski uchilishta, ESPU), in which all students would receive the same general education. The system united previously separate specialized middle schools in a single, twelve-grade program heavily emphasizing technical subjects; in 1981 a national program introduced computers to most of the ESPUs.[20]

Although the Zhivkov regime often advocated closer relations and multilateral cooperation with Yugoslavia, Turkey, Greece, Albania, and Romania, a number of traditional issues barred significant improvement until the late 1980s.[21] Without exception Zhivkov imitated or supported Soviet twists and turns such as Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.[22] Substantial historical and economic ties supplemented the ideological foundation of the relationship; in the 1970s and 1980s, Bulgaria improved its diplomatic relations with nations outside the Soviet sphere.[22] The 1970s was a period of closeness between Brezhnev's USSR and Zhivkov's Bulgaria. Zhivkov was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union in 1977.[23] Yet, though Bulgarian émigré dissident Georgi Markov wrote that "[Zhivkov] served the Soviet Union more ardently than the Soviet leaders themselves did," in many ways he can be said to have exploited the USSR for political purposes, with Bulgaria serving a buffer between the USSR and NATO. Thus, he claims in his memoirs that the USSR had become "a raw material appendage to Bulgaria," something obliquely confirmed by Gorbachev when he wrote in his memoirs that "Bulgaria was a country which had lived beyond its means for a long time." An example of how the "raw material appendage" was exploited was the trade in Soviet crude oil. This would be shipped to Bulgaria's modern refinery in Burgas at subsidized prices, processed, and resold on world markets at a huge premium.

In 1963 and 1973, the Zhivkov regime made requests — it is unclear how far these were in earnest — that Bulgaria be incorporated into the USSR, both times because the Bulgarian government, having engaged in bitter polemics with Yugoslavia over the Macedonia naming dispute, feared a Soviet–Yugoslav reconciliation at its own expense. In 1963, following the decision of Patriarch Alexy I of Moscow to recognize the autonomy of the Macedonian Orthodox Church, the Bulgarian leaders openly declared that there was no "historic Macedonian nation." In the face of Moscow's post-1953 efforts to reach out to Belgrade and Athens, Zhivkov seems to have calculated that a policy of unswerving loyalty to the Kremlin would ensure that it remained more valuable for the USSR than non-aligned Yugoslavia or NATO-affiliated Greece.[24]

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Bulgaria gave official military support to many national liberation causes, most notably in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, (North Vietnam), Indonesia, Libya, Angola, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Middle East. In 1984 the 9,000 Bulgarian advisers stationed in Libya for military and nonmilitary aid put that country in first place among Bulgaria's Third World clients. Through its Kintex arms export enterprise, Bulgaria also engaged in covert military support activities, many of which were subsequently disclosed; in the 1970s, diplomatic crises with Sudan and Egypt were triggered by Bulgarian involvement in coup plots.[25]

Under Zhivkov Bulgaria's policy toward Western Europe and the United States was determined largely by the position of the Soviet Union.[26] Events such as the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan automatically distanced Bulgaria from the West; then, in the early 1980s Soviet efforts to split NATO by cultivating Western Europe brought Bulgaria closer to France and West Germany - a position that continued through the 1980s. Even back in the 1970s, Zhivkov actively pursued better relations with the West, overcoming conservative opposition and the tentative, tourism-based approach to the West taken as early as the 1960s.[25] Emulating Soviet détente policy of the 1970s, Bulgaria gained Western technology, expanded cultural contacts, and attracted Western investments with the most liberal foreign investment policy in Eastern Europe,[25] as in 1956 and 1968, however, Soviet actions altered Bulgaria's position. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979, which Bulgaria supported vigorously, renewed tension between Bulgaria and the West. Alleged Bulgarian implication in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 exacerbated the problem and kept relations cool through the early 1980s.[25] A 1988 application for membership in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was refused because of the Turkish assimilation program, after widespread expectations of success.[26]

Bulgarian relations with Greece, a traditional enemy, were stable throughout the 1970s and 1980s, in spite of major government changes in both countries. Zhivkov made this stability a model for the overall Balkan cooperation that was a centerpiece of his foreign policy in the 1980s;[27] in 1986 the two countries signed a declaration of good-neighborliness, friendship, and cooperation that was based on mutual enmity toward Turkey and toward Yugoslav demands for recognition of Macedonian minorities in Bulgaria and Greece. An important motivation for friendship with Greece was to exploit NATO's Greek-Turkish split, which was based on the claims of the two countries in Cyprus; in early 1989, Bulgaria signed a ten-year bilateral economic agreement with Greece.[27]

Until the late 1980s, Zhivkov successfully prevented unrest in the Bulgarian intellectual community.[28] Membership in the writers' union brought enormous privilege and social stature, and that drew many dissident writers such as Georgi Dzhagarov and Lyubomir Levchev into the circle of the officially approved intelligentsia, on the other hand, entry required intellectual compromise, and refusal to compromise led to dismissal from the union and loss of all privileges. The punishment of dissident writers sometimes went far beyond loss of privileges; in 1978 émigré writer Georgi Markov was murdered in London for his anticommunist broadcasts for the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Blaga Dimitrova was harshly denounced for her critical portrayal of party officials in her 1982 novel Litse.[28]

Zhivkov also softened organized opposition by restoring symbols of the Bulgarian cultural past that had been cast aside in the postwar campaign to consolidate Soviet-style party control. Beginning in 1967, he appealed loudly to the people to remember "our motherland Bulgaria";[28] in the late 1970s, Zhivkov mended relations with the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.[28] Zhivkov's extensive campaign of cultural restoration provided at least some common ground between him and the Bulgarian intelligentsia; in 1980 Zhivkov had improved his domestic position by appointing his daughter Lyudmila Zhivkova as chair of the commission on science, culture, and art.[29] In this powerful position, Zhivkova became extremely popular by promoting Bulgaria's separate national cultural heritage, she spent large sums of money in a highly visible campaign to support scholars, collect Bulgarian art, and sponsor cultural institutions. Among her policies was closer cultural contact with the West; her most visible project was the spectacular national celebration of Bulgaria's 1,300th anniversary in 1981. When Zhivkova died in 1981, relations with the West had already been chilled by the Afghanistan issue, but her brief administration of Bulgaria's official cultural life was a successful phase of her father's appeal to Bulgarian national tradition to bind the country together.[29]

Sports also prospered during Zhivkov's rule, from 1956 to 1988, Bulgaria won an unprecedented 153 Olympic medals and numerous European and world competitions in sports as diverse as volleyball, rhythmic gymnastics and wrestling.

Dissent was punished under Zhivkov's rule, the CSS was a feared tool of control, and overt opposition largely stayed underground until the late 1980s. In 1978, the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated in London by an agent who stabbed him with an umbrella tip which implanted a very small ricin ball. According to former KGBgeneralOleg Kalugin, this was requested by Zhivkov and either performed by the KGB or it assisted the CSS; the actual assassin is reputed to have been Francesco Gullino, working for the CSS. In Zhivkov's time, Bulgarians found it extremely difficult to travel abroad.

Zhivkov was particularly intolerant of dissent within the Party. When Mikhail Gorbachev announced his reform program, Zhivkov made a show of copying it, believing that Gorbachev wasn't really serious about glasnost or perestroika.[30] However, he showed his true colors when he expelled several members of a human-rights watch group from the Party. Soon afterward, when several intellectuals announced the formation of the "Club for the Support of Perestroika and Glasnost," he arrested the leaders and threw them out of the Party.[31]

Zhivkov promoted his children, daughter Lyudmila Zhivkova and son Vladimir Zhivkov, in the BCP hierarchy. Lyudmila became a Politburo member and earned the ire of the BCP and Bulgaria's benefactors in Moscow with her unorthodox artistic ideas and practice of Eastern religions, she died abruptly at the age of 38 in 1981. Her health was severely compromised by stress, failed marriages, and unusual dietary/lifestyle practices, although rumours of assassination or suicide abounded, with Lyudmila's death, her friends and supporters were quickly removed from all positions of power. Son-in-law Ivan Slavkov was made chairman of Bulgaria's state television company and later became president of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee.

Apart from promoting his family, Zhivkov instituted a complex system of privileges which extended to former Resistance figures, Party members and prominenti of the sciences, arts and manufacture; in the early 1960s, he was instrumental in constructing a large set of housing, financial, educational, electoral and other benefits to be granted to a large category of people called "Active Fighters against Capitalism and Fascism" who had ostensibly been members of the rather modest Bulgarian Wartime resistance and which was expanded to absurd proportions. Without necessarily receiving great remuneration (pay differentials under Zhivkov were within the 5:1 range, with the overwhelming majority of salaries being within the 3:1 range), Party members and CSS informers received very significant perquisites which involved access to accommodation, luxury imported goods, hard currency, the ability to travel abroad, superior medical and dental treatment and unhindered entry to higher education for their children, the scope of these privileges broadened as they rose in the Party hierarchy. Eminent artists, scientists and "Heroes of Socialist Labour" (mostly collective farmers and shop-floor workers) received similar privileges. Established in the early years of Zhivkov's terms in power, Corecom was a retail chain in which foreigners could shop with hard currency, but its main customers were privileged Bulgarians close to the Zhivkov regime.

In Zhivkov's Bulgaria, money had lost many of its traditional properties, being replaced by sets of complex personal and family material and career considerations which have been described as "feudal", this hampered the prosecution in post-Zhivkov fraud and corruption trials, since no venality could be proved against those charged: they had merely received goods in kind and services which moreover had been their "legal due".

Zhivkov reserved a special attention for his birthplace of Pravets; in the 1960s this small village was declared "an Urban Community," becoming a town a decade later. In 1982 Bulgaria's first Apple clone personal computer was named the Pravets, the grateful citizens of Pravets responded by erecting a heroic statue to Zhivkov which he duly had taken down, ostensibly to prevent a personal cult growing around him. It was re-erected after his death.

Throughout his tenure of power, Zhivkov surrounded himself with those who exhibited predanost (loyalty, devotion, the desire to proffer all); in his reminiscences, Vladimir Kostov, a Bulgarian secret agent who defected to France in 1978, recalls how the powerful minister of internal affairs would suffer nervous episodes before meeting Zhivkov lest his predanost should fail to come across sufficiently expressively.

Throughout his term of power, Todor Zhivkov's dialect and poor manners made him the butt of many acerbic jibes and jokes in Bulgaria's urbane circles. While the feared CSS secret police was commonly said to persecute those who told political jokes, Zhivkov himself was said to have found them amusing and "collected" an archive of them, his popular nickname was "bai Tosho" (approximately "Ol' Uncle Tosho") or occasionally (and later) "Tato" (a dialectal word for "Dad" or "Pop"). Markov tells a story of how Zhivkov reproached a popular newspaper cartoonist for modifying his signature to resemble a pig's tail, yet did not persecute him. A handful of satirist dissidents such as Radoy Ralin enjoyed some prominence, although Ralin was not favored by the authorities due to his sharp satire.

In December 1984, Todor Zhivkov began a campaign of forcible assimilation of Bulgaria's Turkish minority, most notably forcing all Turks to take Bulgarian names. By 1989, resistance to this policy led to riots, which resulted in multiple deaths; in May 1989, Zhivkov suddenly granted permission to all Turks to leave the country, which led to over 300,000 emigrating to Turkey within three months. As it turned out, this was the beginning of the end for the longtime leader. Bulgaria was the target of near-unanimous condemnation from the international community; even the Soviets protested. Gorbachev already did not think much of Zhivkov; he had lumped Zhivkov in with a group of inflexible hardliners that included East Germany's Erich Honecker, Czechoslovakia'sGustáv Husák and Romania'sNicolae Ceaușescu. However, after the Turkish episode, he was determined to see Zhivkov gone, the Turkish affair also alarmed several high-ranking Bulgarian officials as well, including Prime MinisterGeorgi Atanasov, Foreign Minister Petar Mladenov and Finance Minister Andrey Lukanov. They began plotting to remove him, but had to move discreetly given the ubiquity of the CSS.[30]

In October 1989, Mladenov organised a CSCE environmental summit in Sofia, he invited an independent group of Bulgarian environmental activists, Ecoglasnost, to participate. Ten days into the conference, several Ecoglasnost activists and supporters were brutally beaten up by CSS and militia officers—on orders from Zhivkov, they then collared 36 other opposition activists, drove them to the countryside and forced them to walk back to Sofia. Amid near-unanimous international condemnation, Mladenov, Lukanov and Atansov decided that Zhivkov had to go; in a critical step, they convinced Defence Minister Dobri Dzhurov to support them.[30][31]

The plotters struck on 9 November, a day before a Politburo meeting. Dzhurov met Zhivkov in private and told him that he needed to resign, and there was enough support on the Politburo to vote him out. Zhivkov was taken by surprise and tried to marshal support, to no avail. Just before the Politburo formally met the next day, Dzhurov told Zhivkov that if he did not resign, the Politburo would not only vote him out but have him executed, on 10 November, seeing the writing on the wall after the motion calling for his removal passed, Zhivkov resigned, officially for reasons of age and health. On 17 November the National Assembly removed him from the post of Chairman of the State Council, thus Mladenov becoming the new party and state leader.[32][30][31]

Zhivkov's ouster, however, came too late to save the regime, on 11 December, only a month after Zhivkov's ouster, Mladenov called for the Communist Party to give up its guaranteed right to rule.[33] The Central Committee fell into line two days later, calling for free elections in the spring and asking the National Assembly to delete the portions of the Constitution that enshrined the party's "leading role". [34] On 15 January, the National Assembly struck out the portions of the constitution giving the Communist Party a monopoly of power. Thus, within only two months of Zhivkov losing power, the Communist system he had dominated for 35 years was no more.[30][31]

While he was initially shown reverence in public upon removal, that had changed by 13 December, on that day, Zhivkov was expelled from the party for what Lukanov described as "gross violations of laws and gross mistakes in politics".[34] Mladenov contended that Zhivkov's stewardship had left the country in "a near heart-attack condition",[34] the party also began an investigation into Zhivkov's high living.

After being placed under house arrest on 18 January 1990, on 25 February 1991, Zhivkov was brought to stand trial on charges of embezzling the equivalent of $24 million (in 1990 dollars) in government funds. There had been calls to try him for political crimes as well, but prosecutors balked, believing they did not have enough evidence to convict him, on 4 September 1992 after an 18-month trial, he was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to seven years in prison.[35] Due to old age and heart problems, he was allowed to serve his term under house arrest at his granddaughter's home. Following his appeal, he was acquitted of the embezzlement charge by the Bulgarian Supreme Court on 9 February 1996, he was also acquitted of the charge of abuse of office on 28 August, though he still remained under indictment for human rights violations, eventually being released from house arrest in September 1997. In later years, he gave frequent interviews to foreign journalists.[36]

After Zhivkov fell from the presidency and was expelled from the BCP, the Party gave up its monopoly on power in February 1990 and allowed Bulgaria's first democratic elections for 59 years in June 1990. Like the Soviet Bloc in the face of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (SEV, Comecon), the Warsaw Pact Organization and the USSR itself collapsed, by 1992 Bulgaria entered a period of transition from socialism to a free market economy and democracy. The country's political ideology and foreign policies of Zhivkov's era have thus been reversed.

On the other hand, Bulgaria's post-communism political, business, military, academic and artistic elites, as well as the members of the country's large and active organized crime groups, have been almost entirely the scions of Communist eminenti who had become prominent during Zhivkov's long rule.[citation needed]

Zhivkov's onslaught on Bulgaria's Muslims and Turks radicalized and united what had been scattered and quiescent minorities, since 2001 (and also from 1991 to 1994) the DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) party, composed almost entirely of Bulgarian Turks, has held the balance of power in Bulgarian politics. Thus, one of the major Zhivkov projects produced the very opposite effect of what had been intended.

A most damaging process, which emerged during the early years of Zhivkov's rule, was the "demographic problem" which saw traditionally large Bulgarian village families emigrate to industrial cities where they tended to have one child or none at all, the reforms undertaken during Zhivkov's regime consisted mostly of fines for families without children and limiting abortion. At the turn of the 21st century the Bulgarian population was widely expected to decline from a 1990 high of nine million to some five million within a generation.[citation needed]

On the other hand, after very significant reverses and difficulties in the 1940s and 1950s, the Bulgarian economy developed apace from the mid-1960s until the late 1970s. Most of today's large industrial facilities such as the Kremikovtsi steelworks and the Chervena Mogila engineering works were built under Zhivkov. Bulgaria's nuclear power station, AEC Kozloduy, was built in the 1970s, all six large reactors commissioned in under five years. This, and Bulgaria's many coal-fired and hydroelectric power stations, made the country a major electric power exporter. By the 1970s, the focus switched to high technologies such as electronics and even space exploration: on 10 April 1979 Bulgaria launched the first of two kosmonavti (cosmonauts), Georgi Ivanov, aboard Soviet Soyuz spaceships and later launched its own space satellites. Having been among the first nations to market electronic calculators (the ELKA brand, since 1973) and digital watches (Elektronika, since 1975), in 1982 the country launched its Pravets personal computer (a near-"Apple II clone") for business and domestic use. In the mid-1960s an economic reform package was introduced, which allowed for farmers to freely sell their overplanned production. Shortly after that Bulgaria became the first and only Eastern Bloc country which locally produced Coca-Cola. Mass tourism developed under Zhivkov's direction from the early 1960s onwards.

However, this Bulgarian economy was exceptionally susceptible to Soviet largesse and Soviet-bloc markets, after the Soviet crude oil price shock of 1979, it entered a very severe recession from which it hardly recovered in the 1980s. After the early-1990s loss of Soviet and Comecon markets, this economy (unused to competing in a free market environment) entered prolonged and significant contraction. Zhivkov-era industrial facilities were largely unattractive to investors, many being left to decay. Great numbers of specialist personnel retired and died without being replaced, or else emigrated or left their state jobs for more lucrative private employment, as agriculture declined, tourism has emerged as almost the sole Zhivkov-era industrial survivor. It is however widely regarded that incompetent administration after 1989 had a much greater effect on the decline of the economy, as even successful industries declined.

Bulgarian Communist Party
–
The Bulgarian Communist Party was the Communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1989 when the country ceased to be a communist state. The partys origins lay in the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party, the partys founding leader was Dimitar Blagoev, who was the driving force behind the form

Valko Chervenkov
–
Valko Velev Chervenkov was a Bulgarian communist politician. He served as leader of the Communist Party between 1950 and 1954, and Prime Minister between 1950 and 1956 and his rule was marked by the consolidation of the Stalin model, rapid industrialisation, collectivisation and large-scale persecution of political opponents. Chervenkov was born in

Petar Mladenov
–
Petar Toshev Mladenov was a Bulgarian communist diplomat and politician. He was the last Communist leader of Bulgaria from 1989 to 1990, Mladenov was born to a peasant family in the village of Toshevtsi, Vidin Province on 22 August 1936. His father was an anti-fascist partisan killed in action in 1944 and he graduated from a military school, entere

Anton Yugov
–
Anton Tanev Yugov was a leading member of the Bulgarian Communist Party served as Prime Minister of the country from 1956 to 1962. Anton Tanev Yugov is Honorary Citizen of Tirana, Albania, Yugov was born to a Bulgarian family in Rugunovets, Ottoman Macedonia, after World War I, his family moved to Plovdiv. This 1941 initiative was aborted however a

1.
Anton Yugov Антон Югов

Pravets
–
Pravets or Pravetz is a town in Pravets Municipality in central western Bulgaria, located approximately 60 km from the capital Sofia. Pravets is home town of Pravetz computers, Pravetz is also a surname, Pravets has a population of 4,512 people. Mountains surround it, which allows for a climate with rare winds. In the outskirts there is a lake used

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Coat of arms

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The coat of arms of Pravets on a billboard

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Pravets in Summer

Kingdom of Bulgaria
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Ferdinand I was crowned a Tsar at the Declaration of Independence, mainly because of his military plans and for seeking options for unification of all Balkan lands with an ethnic Bulgarian majority. The state was almost constantly at war throughout its existence, lending to its nickname as the Balkan Prussia, following the First World War the Bulga

1.
Boundaries on the Balkans after the First and the Second Balkan War (1912-1913)

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The areas where the Ethnic Bulgarians were the majority of the population (in light green) in 1912

Bulgaria
–
Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, with a territory of 110,994 square kilometres, Bulgaria is Europes 16th-largest country. Organised prehistoric cultures began developing on current Bulgarian la

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Objects from Varna necropolis, parts of the oldest golden treasure in the world.

Bulgarians
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Bulgarians are a South Slavic ethnic group who are native to Bulgaria and its neighboring regions. Bulgarian citizenship shall further be acquirable through naturalization, the population of Bulgaria descend from peoples with different origins and numbers. They became assimilated by the Slavic settlers in the First Bulgarian Empire, from the indige

Bulgarian Socialist Party
–
The Bulgarian Socialist Party, known as the Centenarian, is a social-democratic political party in Bulgaria and successor to the Bulgarian Communist Party. The BSP is a member of the Party of European Socialists and it is the leading component of the Coalition for Bulgaria centre-left coalition. The party was formed after the changes of 1989, when

Lyudmila Zhivkova
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Lyudmila Todorova Zhivkova was the daughter of Bulgarian Communist leader Todor Zhivkov, who reached the rank of senior Bulgarian Communist Party functionary and Politburo member. She studied history at Sofia University and history of art at Moscow State University, before researching a book on British-Turkish relations at St Antonys College, Oxfor

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Lyudmila Zhivkova during her visit to India in the late 1970s with her distinctive turban

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Zhivkova in 1978.

Eastern Bloc
–
The Eastern Bloc was the group of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact. The terms Communist Bloc and Soviet Bloc were also used to denote groupings of states aligned with the Soviet Union, although these terms might include states outside Central and Eastern Europe. Soviet l

Republics of the Soviet Union
–
The Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics of the Soviet Union were ethnically based proto-states that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union. Article 81 of the Constitution stated that the rights of Union Republics shall be safeguarded by the USSR. In the final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union offi

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A hall in Bishkek 's Soviet-era Lenin Museum decked with the flags of Soviet Republics

Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic
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It was established in December 1920, when the Soviets took over control of the short-lived First Republic of Armenia and lasted until 1991. On August 23,1990, it was renamed the Republic of Armenia after its sovereignty was declared and its independence was recognized on 26 December 1991 when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. After the dissolution

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Armenians crowding around the building in Yerevan where the 1920 plenum officially declared Armenia a Soviet republic

Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic
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Established on 28 April 1920 as the Azerbaijan SSR, from 12 March 1922 to 5 December 1936, it was part of the Transcausasian SFSR together with the Armenian SSR and the Georgian SSR. In December 1922, the Transcaucasian SFSR became part of the newly established Soviet Union, the Constitution of Azerbaijan SSR was approved by the 9th Extraordinary A

Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic
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To the west it bordered Poland. Within the Soviet Union, it bordered Lithuania and Latvian to the north, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia was declared by the Bolsheviks on 1 January 1919 following the declaration of independence by the Belarusian Democratic Republic in March 1918. In 1922, the BSSR was one of the four founding members o

Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic
–
The Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Estonia or Estonia was a republic of the Soviet Union, administered by a subordinate of the Government of the Soviet Union. The Estonian SSR was subsequently incorporated into the USSR on August 9,1940, the territory was occupied by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944. Most countries did not r

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A propaganda poster from the Stalin era. The poster says: "The spirit of the great Lenin and his victorious banner encourage us now to the Patriotic War."

Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Georgia, formally the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, also commonly known as Soviet Georgia was one of the republics of the Soviet Union from its inception in 1922 to its breakup in 1991. From November 18,1989, the Georgian SSR declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws, geographically, the Georgian SSR was bordered by Turkey to the south-west a

Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic
–
It was created on December 5,1936 from the Kazakh ASSR, an autonomous republic of the Russian SFSR. At 2,717,300 square kilometres in area, it was the second largest republic in the USSR, today it is the independent state of Kazakhstan in Central Asia. During its existence as a Soviet republic it was led by the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR, on

Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic
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Landlocked and mountainous, it bordered the Tajikistan and China to the south, Uzbekistan to the west and Kazakhstan to the north. The Kirghiz branch of the Soviet Communist Party governed the republic from 1936 until 1990, on 15 December 1990, the Kirghiz SSR was renamed to Socialist Republic of Kirghizia after declaring its state sovereignty. On

Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic
–
The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Latvia or Latvia, was a republic of the Soviet Union. Its territory was conquered by Nazi Germany in June–July 1941. Soviet rule came to the end during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and restoring its former state symbols - flag and anthem. The full independence of the Republic of La

Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic
–
The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Lithuania or Lithuania was a republic of the Soviet Union. It existed from 1940 to 1990, between 1941 and 1944, the German invasion of the Soviet Union caused its de facto dissolution. However, with the retreat of the Germans in 1944–1945, Soviet hegemony was re-established, on 18 May 1

Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Moldavia, officially the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known to as Soviet Moldavia, was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union existed from 1940 to 1991. The republic was formed on August 2,1940 from parts of Bessarabia, a region annexed from Romania on June 28 of that year, and parts of the MASSR, an autonomous republic withi

Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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The Republic comprised sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais, and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group, the capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. The Russian Soviet Repub

Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic
–
The Tajik Republic was created on 5 December 1929 as a national entity for the Tajik people within the Soviet Union. On 24 August 1990, the Tajik SSR declared sovereignty in its borders, the republic was renamed to the Republic of Tajikistan on 31 August 1991 and declared its independence from the Soviet Union on 9 September 1991. Geographically, a

Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic
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Initially, on 7 August 1921, it was established as the Turkmen Oblast of the Turkestan ASSR before being made, on 13 May 1925, a separate republic of the USSR as the Turkmen SSR. Since then the borders of the Turkmenia were unchanged, on 22 August 1990, Turkmenia declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws. On 27 October 1991, it became independent a

Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The Ukrainian SSR was a founding member of the United Nations, although it was legally represented by the All-Union state in its affairs with countries outside of the Soviet Union. From the start, the city of Kharkiv served as the republics capital. However, in 1934, the seat of government was moved to the city of Kyiv. Geographically, the Ukrainia

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"Eternally Together": a Soviet poster made for the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1954.

Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic
–
Uzbekistan, officially the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and the Republic of Uzbekistan, also referred to as Soviet Uzbekistan was one of the republics of the Soviet Union existed from 1924 to 1991. It was governed by the Uzbek branch of the Soviet Communist Party, from 1990 to 1991, it was the sovereign part of the Soviet Union with its own legi

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World War II poster commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Uzbek SSR.

Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
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It has been regarded as a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Several other state symbols were changed in 1960, the official name of the country was the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Conventional wisdom suggested that it would be known as simply the Czechoslovak Republic—its official name from 1920 to 1938, the traditional etymology derives it

Socialist Republic of Romania
–
The Socialist Republic of Romania refers to Romania under Marxist-Leninist one-party Communist rule that existed officially from 1947 to 1989. From 1947 to 1965, the state was known as the Romanian Peoples Republic, the country was a Soviet-aligned Eastern Bloc state with a dominant role for the Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its constitutio

East Germany
–
East Germany, formally the German Democratic Republic, was an Eastern Bloc state during the Cold War period. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin, but did not include it, as a result, the German Democratic Republic was established in the Soviet Zone, while the Federal Republic was established in the three western zones. East Germany, which lies c

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
–
Covering an area of 255,804 km², the SFRY was bordered with Italy to the west, Hungary to the north, Bulgaria and Romania to the east and Albania and Greece to the south. In addition, it included two autonomous provinces within Serbia, Kosovo and Vojvodina, the SFRY traces back to 29 June 1943 when the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberati

Tito-Stalin split
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This was the beginning of the Informbiro period, marked by poor relations with the USSR, that came to an end in 1955. During the Second World War, Yugoslavia was occupied by the Axis, at this point, Tito was loyal to Moscow. This had already led to friction between the two countries before World War II was even over. Although Tito was formally an a

Cuba
–
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is a country comprising the island of Cuba as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and it is south of both the U. S. state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Haiti, and north of Jamaica. Havana is the

Somali Democratic Republic
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The putsch came a few days after the assassination of Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, the nations second President, by one of his own bodyguards. Barres administration would rule Somalia for the following 21 years, until the outbreak of the war in 1991. Alongside Barre, the Supreme Revolutionary Council that assumed power after President Sharmarkes assas

Ogaden War
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The war ended when the Americans brokered a ceasefire. Despite this, large parts of the Ogaden remained in Somali hands until 1980, following World War II, Britain retained control of both British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland as protectorates. British Somaliland remained a protectorate of Britain until 1960, Britain included the provision that

South Yemen
–
The Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen, also referred to as South Yemen, Democratic Yemen or Yemen a. k. a. South Arabian Federation, was a socialist state in the southern and eastern provinces of the present-day Republic of Yemen and it united with the Yemen Arab Republic on 22 May 1990, to form the present-day Yemen. After four years, however,

Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
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The PDPA came to power through a coup known as the Saur Revolution, which ousted the government of Mohammad Daoud Khan. Daoud was succeeded by Nur Muhammad Taraki as head of state, soon after taking power a power struggle began between the Khalqists led by Taraki and Amin and the Parchamites led by Babrak Karmal. The Khalqists won and the Parcham f

China
–
China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin

Sino-Soviet split
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In the 1960s, China and the Soviet Union were the two largest communist states in the world. The doctrinal divergence derived from Chinese and Soviet national interests, in the 1950s and the 1960s, ideological debate between the communist parties of the USSR and China also concerned the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the capitalist West.

North Korea
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North Korea, officially the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, is a country in East Asia, constituting the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang is both the capital as well as its largest city. To the north and northwest the country is bordered by China and by Russia along the Amnok, the country is bordered to the south by South Korea

1.
Jikji, the first known book printed with movable metal type in 1377. Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris

4.
Three Koreans shot for pulling up rails as a protest against seizure of land without payment by the Japanese

Vietnam
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Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With an estimated 92.7 million inhabitants as of 2016, it is the worlds 14th-most-populous country, and its capital city has been Hanoi since the reunification of North and South Vietnam in 1976, with Ho Chi Minh City as a

Laos
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Present day Laos traces its historic and cultural identity to the kingdom of Lan Xang Hom Khao, which existed for four centuries as one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia. Due to Lan Xangs central geographical location in Southeast Asia, the kingdom was able to become a hub for overland trade. After a period of conflict, Lan Xang broke off i

Cominform
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Founded in 1947, Cominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers Parties. The intended purpose of Cominform was to coordinate actions between Communist parties under Soviet direction and it had its own newspaper, For Lasting Peace, for Peoples Democracy. In other aspects, Comin

Comecon
–
The descriptive term was often applied to all multilateral activities involving members of the organization, rather than being restricted to the direct functions of Comecon and its organs. According to some historians, Moscow was concerned about the Marshall Plan, Comecon was meant to prevent countries in the Soviets’ sphere of influence from movin

1.
An East German stamp celebrating the 40th anniversary of Comecon in 1989

2.
Flag

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1974 Medallion 10th Anniversary of Intermetall, that was founded in 1964 in Budapest

Warsaw Pact
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The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the regional economic organization for the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. While the Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to NATO, instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis and in proxy wars. Both N

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Logo Military unit Organization The Warsaw Pact. Union of peace and socialism

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Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance

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Soviet philatelic commemoration: At its 20th anniversary in 1975, the Warsaw Pact remains On Guard for Peace and Socialism.

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Warsaw Pact "Big Seven" threats

World Federation of Trade Unions
–
The World Federation of Trade Unions was established in 1945 to replace the International Federation of Trade Unions. Its mission was to bring together trade unions across the world in a international organization. In the context of the Cold War, the WFTU was often portrayed as a Soviet front organization, a number of those unions, including those

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World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU)

World Federation of Democratic Youth
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The World Federation of Democratic Youth is an international youth organization, recognized by the United Nations as an international youth non-governmental organization. WFDY describes itself as an anti-imperialist, left-wing organization, the WFDY Headquarters are in Budapest, Hungary. The main event of WFDY is the World Festival of Youth, the la

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UPA propaganda poster. OUN/UPAs formal greeting is written in Ukrainian on two of the horizontal lines Glory to Ukraine- Glory to (her) Heroes. The soldier is standing on the banners of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

4.
East German construction workers building the Berlin Wall, 20 November 1961.

Breakup of Yugoslavia

1.
Serbian President Slobodan Milošević 's unequivocal desire to uphold the unity of Serbs, a status threatened by each republic breaking away from the federation, in addition to his opposition to the Albanian authorities in Kosovo, further inflamed ethnic tensions.

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Soviet Politburo passes resolution to execute 346 "enemies of the CPSU and the Soviet Power" who led "counter-revolutionary, right-trotskyite, plotting and spying activities". Signed by secretary: Stalin, 17 January 1940

2.
Prior to the revolution of 1917, Stalin played an active role in fighting the Russian government. Here he is shown on a 1911 information card from the files of the Russian police in Saint Petersburg.

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A group of participants in the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 1919. In the middle are Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin.

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Bulgarian Communist Party
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The Bulgarian Communist Party was the Communist and Marxist-Leninist ruling party of the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria from 1946 until 1989 when the country ceased to be a communist state. The partys origins lay in the Bulgarian Social Democratic Workers Party, the partys founding leader was Dimitar Blagoev, who was the driving force behind the formation of the BSDWP in 1894. It comprised most of the hardline Marxists in the Social Democratic Workers Party, the party opposed World War I and was sympathetic to the October Revolution in Russia. Under Blagoevs leadership, the party applied to join the Communist International upon its founding in 1919, upon joining the Comintern the party was reorganised as the Communist Party of Bulgaria. Georgi Dimitrov was a member of the partys Central Committee from its inception in 1919 until his death in 1949, in 1938 the party merged with the Bulgarian Workers Party and took the former partys name. In 1948 the BWP reunited with the Social Democrats to become the Bulgarian Communist Party once again, following Dimitrovs sudden death, the party was led by Valko Chervenkov, a Stalinist who oversaw a number of party purges that met with Moscows approval. The party joined the Cominform at its inception in 1948 and conducted purges against suspected Titoites following the expulsion of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia from the alliance, in March 1954, one year after Joseph Stalins death, Chervenkov was deposed. From 1954 until 1989 the party was led by Todor Zhivkov and his rule led to relative political stability and an increase in living standards. The demands for reform which swept Eastern Europe in 1989 led Zhivkov to resign. He was succeeded by a more liberal Communist, Petar Mladenov. However, events overtook him, and on December 11 Mladenov announced the party was giving up its guaranteed right to rule. For all intents and purposes, this was the end of Communist rule in Bulgaria, the party moved in a more moderate direction, and by the spring of 1990 was no longer a Marxist-Leninist party. That April, the party changed its name to the Bulgarian Socialist Party, a number of hardline Communists established several splinter parties with a small number of members. One of these parties, named Communist Party of Bulgaria, is led by Aleksandar Paunov. m. wikipedia. org/wiki/Народен_дом_на_терора

2.
Valko Chervenkov
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Valko Velev Chervenkov was a Bulgarian communist politician. He served as leader of the Communist Party between 1950 and 1954, and Prime Minister between 1950 and 1956 and his rule was marked by the consolidation of the Stalin model, rapid industrialisation, collectivisation and large-scale persecution of political opponents. Chervenkov was born in Zlatitsa, Bulgaria and he became a member of the Communist Party in 1919 and participated in communist youth group activities and newspaper editing. He took part in the failed 1923 September Uprising and was sentenced to death, in 1925 Chervenkov fled to the Soviet Union. He attended the Marx-Lenin school in Moscow and eventually became its director and he became a supporter of the governing style of Joseph Stalin and was known for his high wit and knowledge of Marxism–Leninism. He was recruited as an agent in the NKVD under the alias Spartak, in 1941, Chervenkov became the director of a radio station which sent anti-nazi and pro-communist messages to the Bulgarian people. In 1944 Chervenkov returned to Bulgaria on a mission for his brother-in-law, Chervenkov became a member of the government which took office soon after the end of World War II in 1945 which quickly came to be controlled by Communists. He became minister of culture in 1947, and became deputy minister in 1949. Shortly after becoming deputy minister, Bulgarian leader Georgi Dimitrov died. Chervenkov became general secretary of the party, and Vasil Kolarov took Dimitrovs other post of prime minister, Kolarov himself died in 1950, and Chervenkov fused the two most powerful offices in Bulgaria once again, with full Soviet approval. Chervenkovs policies closely resembled those of the Soviet Union at the time, in 1950, a collectivization campaign was launched. By early 1951, Chervenkov had expelled one in five party members, including high officials. Out of 460,000 members,100,000 were expelled from the party by 1953, although Chervenkovs personality cult model was similar to that of Stalin, he personally accepted it only as a necessity of the current political situation and strongly opposed any extremities. By 1953, Bulgaria had cut ties with the West and 90% of its exports and imports involved Soviet partnership, Chervenkovs cabinet used intimidation and supply discrimination to increase collectivization rates. Between 1950 and 1953, state-owned arable land increased from 12% to 61%, even before the death of Stalin, Chervenkov had already begun moving away from the Stalinist line. The official approval of Dimitar Dimovs novel Tobacco marked a slight loosening of Party control over cultural activities, in April 1956, following Khrushchevs de-Stalinisation, the Bulgarian Communist Party denounced Stalinism. Between 1962 and 1969, his membership in the Party was suspended, in 1926 Chervenkov married Georgi Dimitrovs youngest sister, Elena. They had two children - Irina and Vladimir

3.
Petar Mladenov
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Petar Toshev Mladenov was a Bulgarian communist diplomat and politician. He was the last Communist leader of Bulgaria from 1989 to 1990, Mladenov was born to a peasant family in the village of Toshevtsi, Vidin Province on 22 August 1936. His father was an anti-fascist partisan killed in action in 1944 and he graduated from a military school, entered Sofia State University, and graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations in 1963. Soon afterward, he joined the Bulgarian Communist Party, Mladenov served as the first secretary of the partys committee in Vidin Province from 1969 to 1971. He joined the Politburo and became minister in 1971, serving in that position for 18 years. In the same year, he was elected to the National Assembly and he was one of the closest associates to longtime leader Todor Zhivkov. During the 1980s, he attracted to Mikhail Gorbachevs reform efforts. He saw a chance to change Bulgarias image as one of the most unreformed countries in the Eastern Bloc, in May 1989, Zhivkov ordered the expulsion of most of Bulgarias ethnic Turks. Mladenov, whod had to field most of the complaints, was particularly upset because the expulsion violated an international human rights accord hed signed four months earlier. Several other top officials, including Defense Minister Dobri Dzhurov, Premier Georgi Atanasov, along with Mladenov, they began plotting to overthow Zhivkov. Although Lukanov did most of the work, it was decided that Mladenov would be the new party leader. At the yearly Warsaw Pact summit, he met with Mikhail Gorbachev, in October 1989, Mladenov organized a 35-nation environmental conference and invited the Bulgarian NGO Ecoglasnost to participate. Ten days into the conference, several Ecoglasnost members were beaten up by the Darzhavna Sigurnost, when Mladenov found out about it, he decided Zhivkov had to go. On October 24, Mladenov resigned as foreign minister and his resignation letter was a scathing condemnation of Zhivkovs way of ruling the country. Suspecting that Zhivkov might try to kill him, he sent a copy of the letter to the entire Politburo, on November 9, just after he returned from a trip to China, Mladenov and his colleagues forced Zhivkov to resign. He was then elected to Zhivkovs old posts as general secretary of the party, the latter post was equivalent to that of president. Having seen the overthrow of the other Eastern Bloc governments, Mladenov embarked on a more open government policy in hopes of bringing about change from above. He also stated his commitment to making Bulgaria a modern, democratic, to that end, he let it be known that he supported free elections, a greater role for the legislature and other reforms

Petar Mladenov
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Petar Toshev Mladenov Петър Тошев Младенов

4.
Anton Yugov
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Anton Tanev Yugov was a leading member of the Bulgarian Communist Party served as Prime Minister of the country from 1956 to 1962. Anton Tanev Yugov is Honorary Citizen of Tirana, Albania, Yugov was born to a Bulgarian family in Rugunovets, Ottoman Macedonia, after World War I, his family moved to Plovdiv. This 1941 initiative was aborted however as Tito would not accept the sacrifice of Macedonia and he served as Minister of the Interior from 1944 to 1949. As Interior Minister he oversaw a purge of the army of members of Zveno, as part of the move away from the Stalin template, the Bulgarian government released the April Line of 1956, which formed the basis of Bulgarian communism for the next three decades. He remained in the job for six years until overall leader Todor Zhivkov also assumed this role, Yugov, who had criticised Zhivkov for allowing the Great Leap Forward to influence economic policy, was removed as a potential rival. His strong following amongst the home communists also meant that Zhivkov feared Yugov as a challenge to his own position, yugovs fate had been sealed earlier that same year when Nikita Khrushchev visited Bulgaria and publicly declared his support for Zhivkov, whilst snubbing Yugov. He was rehabilitated on the 1990 BCP party congress

Anton Yugov
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Anton Yugov Антон Югов

5.
Pravets
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Pravets or Pravetz is a town in Pravets Municipality in central western Bulgaria, located approximately 60 km from the capital Sofia. Pravets is home town of Pravetz computers, Pravetz is also a surname, Pravets has a population of 4,512 people. Mountains surround it, which allows for a climate with rare winds. In the outskirts there is a lake used for fishing. The town is the birthplace of Bulgarias longtime communist President Todor Zhivkov, the first microprocessor factory in Bulgaria was situated in Pravets. These computers, which were also the first in Bulgaria, were named Pravets-82, today, the town is most famous for its Computers and technology systems high school and the RIU golf resort complex. There is also a high school by the name of Aleko Konstantinov. It prepares many students who continue their education in Bulgaria, England, the USA, Germany. During the school year, the town is filled with students from different towns, professional High School of Computing and Technology Systems Country&Golf in the area Image Gallery of Pravets Large Image Gallery of Pravets and the Region

Pravets
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Coat of arms
Pravets
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The coat of arms of Pravets on a billboard
Pravets
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Pravets in Summer

6.
Kingdom of Bulgaria
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Ferdinand I was crowned a Tsar at the Declaration of Independence, mainly because of his military plans and for seeking options for unification of all Balkan lands with an ethnic Bulgarian majority. The state was almost constantly at war throughout its existence, lending to its nickname as the Balkan Prussia, following the First World War the Bulgarian army was disbanded and forbidden to exist by the Allied powers, and all plans for national unification of the Bulgarian lands failed. In 1946, the monarchy was abolished, its final Tsar was sent into exile, to complicate matters, Serbia and Greece too made claims over parts of Macedonia, while Serbia, as a Slavic nation, also considered Macedonian Slavs as belonging to the Serbian nation. Thus began a struggle for control of these areas which lasted until World War I. In 1903, there was a Bulgarian insurrection in Ottoman Macedonia, in 1908, Ferdinand used the struggles among the Great Powers to declare Bulgaria an independent kingdom with himself as Tsar. He did this on 5 October in the St Forty Martyrs Church in Veliko Tarnovo, in February 1912 a secret treaty was signed between Bulgaria and Serbia, and in May 1912 a similar treaty was signed with Greece. Montenegro was also brought into the pact, the treaties provided for the partition of Macedonia and Thrace between the allies, although the lines of partition were left dangerously vague. After the Ottomans refused to implement reforms in the disputed areas, the allies had an astonishing success. The Bulgarian army inflicted several crushing defeats on the Ottoman forces and advanced threateningly against Constantinople, while the Serbs, the Ottomans sued for peace in December. Negotiations broke down, and fighting resumed in February 1913, the Ottomans lost Adrianople to a Bulgarian task force. A second armistice followed in March, with the Ottomans losing all their European possessions west of the Midia-Enos line, Bulgaria gained possession of most of Thrace, including Adrianople and the Aegean port of Dedeagach. Bulgaria also gained a slice of Macedonia, north and east of Thessaloniki, Bulgaria sustained the heaviest casualties of any of the allies, and on this basis felt entitled to the largest share of the spoils. Some circles in Bulgaria inclined toward going to war with Serbia, in June 1913 Serbia and Greece formed a new alliance, against Bulgaria. The Serbian and the Greek forces were initially on the retreat on the western border, the fighting was very harsh, with many casualties, especially during the key Battle of Bregalnica. Soon Romania entered the war and attacked Bulgaria from the north, the Ottoman Empire also attacked from the south-east. The war was now definitely lost for Bulgaria, which had to abandon most of her claims of Macedonia to Serbia and Greece, Romania took possession of southern Dobruja. In the aftermath of the Balkan Wars, Bulgarian opinion turned against Russia and the western powers, the government of Vasil Radoslavov aligned Bulgaria with Germany and Austria-Hungary, even though this meant also becoming an ally of the Ottomans, Bulgarias traditional enemy. But Bulgaria now had no claims against the Ottomans, whereas Serbia, Greece, the UK, France, Italy and Russia then declared war on Bulgaria

Kingdom of Bulgaria
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Boundaries on the Balkans after the First and the Second Balkan War (1912-1913)
Kingdom of Bulgaria
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Flag
Kingdom of Bulgaria
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Bulgarian dead in the Balkan Wars
Kingdom of Bulgaria
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The areas where the Ethnic Bulgarians were the majority of the population (in light green) in 1912

7.
Bulgaria
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Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in southeastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, with a territory of 110,994 square kilometres, Bulgaria is Europes 16th-largest country. Organised prehistoric cultures began developing on current Bulgarian lands during the Neolithic period and its ancient history saw the presence of the Thracians, Greeks, Persians, Celts, Romans, Goths, Alans and Huns. With the downfall of the Second Bulgarian Empire in 1396, its territories came under Ottoman rule for five centuries. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 led to the formation of the Third Bulgarian State, the following years saw several conflicts with its neighbours, which prompted Bulgaria to align with Germany in both world wars. In 1946 it became a one-party socialist state as part of the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc, in December 1989 the ruling Communist Party allowed multi-party elections, which subsequently led to Bulgarias transition into a democracy and a market-based economy. Bulgarias population of 7.2 million people is predominantly urbanised, most commercial and cultural activities are centred on the capital and largest city, Sofia. The strongest sectors of the economy are industry, power engineering. The countrys current political structure dates to the adoption of a constitution in 1991. Bulgaria is a parliamentary republic with a high degree of political, administrative. Human activity in the lands of modern Bulgaria can be traced back to the Paleolithic, animal bones incised with man-made markings from Kozarnika cave are assumed to be the earliest examples of symbolic behaviour in humans. Organised prehistoric societies in Bulgarian lands include the Neolithic Hamangia culture, Vinča culture, the latter is credited with inventing gold working and exploitation. Some of these first gold smelters produced the coins, weapons and jewellery of the Varna Necropolis treasure and this site also offers insights for understanding the social hierarchy of the earliest European societies. Thracians, one of the three primary groups of modern Bulgarians, began appearing in the region during the Iron Age. In the late 6th century BC, the Persians conquered most of present-day Bulgaria, and kept it until 479 BC. After the division of the Roman Empire in the 5th century the area fell under Byzantine control, by this time, Christianity had already spread in the region. A small Gothic community in Nicopolis ad Istrum produced the first Germanic language book in the 4th century, the first Christian monastery in Europe was established around the same time by Saint Athanasius in central Bulgaria. From the 6th century the easternmost South Slavs gradually settled in the region, in 680 Bulgar tribes under the leadership of Asparukh moved south across the Danube and settled in the area between the lower Danube and the Balkan, establishing their capital at Pliska

8.
Bulgarians
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Bulgarians are a South Slavic ethnic group who are native to Bulgaria and its neighboring regions. Bulgarian citizenship shall further be acquirable through naturalization, the population of Bulgaria descend from peoples with different origins and numbers. They became assimilated by the Slavic settlers in the First Bulgarian Empire, from the indigenous Thracian people certain cultural and ethnic elements were taken. Other pre-Slavic Indo-European peoples, including Dacians, Celts, Goths, Romans, Greeks, the Thracian language has been described as a southern Baltic language. Some pre-Slavic linguistic and cultural traces might have preserved in modern Bulgarians. Medieval historians claimed that the Triballi are the largest tribe and that subsequently changed their name to Bulgarians or Serbs. Others claimed that the Paeonians are Bulgarians, others claimed that the Moesi, according to archeological evidence from the late periods of Roman rule, the Romans did not decrease the number of Thracians significantly in major cities. The latter gradually inflicting total linguistic replacement of Thracian if the Thracians had not already been Romanized or Hellenized and they continued coming to the Balkans in many waves, but also leaving, most notably Justinian II settled as many as 30,000 Slavs from Thrace in Asia Minor. The Byzantines grouped the numerous Slavic tribes into two groups, the Sklavenoi and Antes, some Bulgarian scholars suggest that the Antes became one of the ancestors of the modern Bulgarians. The control of the Bulgars in the west was indirect and in the hands of the Slavic chiefs, the Bulgars are first mentioned in the 4th century in the vicinity of the North Caucasian steppe. However, any connection between the Bulgars and postulated Asian counterparts rest on little more than speculative and contorted etymologies. The Bulgars are not thought to have numerous, becoming a ruling elite in the areas they controlled. Their archeological evidence is concentrated in northeast Bulgaria and in Macedonia, mixed Bulgar-Slavic settlements emerged according to archeological evidence. Omurtag was the last ruler with a Turkic name and during the reign of Boris the Slavonic language reached an official level, a substantional number of loan words of the Bulgar language remained in the Medieval Bulgarian Slavic language and fewer survived in the modern. During the Early Byzantine Era, the Roman provincials in Scythia Minor and Moesia Secunda were already engaged in economic, the major port towns in Pontic Bulgaria remained Byzantine Greek in their outlook. The establishment of a new state molded the various Slav, Bulgar, in different periods to the ethnogenesis of the local population contributed also different Indo-European and Turkic people, who settled or lived on the Balkans. The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681, after the adoption of Orthodox Christianity in 864 it became one of the cultural centres of Slavic Europe. Its leading cultural position was consolidated with the invention of the Cyrillic script in its capital Preslav at the eve of the 10th century

9.
Bulgarian Socialist Party
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The Bulgarian Socialist Party, known as the Centenarian, is a social-democratic political party in Bulgaria and successor to the Bulgarian Communist Party. The BSP is a member of the Party of European Socialists and it is the leading component of the Coalition for Bulgaria centre-left coalition. The party was formed after the changes of 1989, when the Communist Party abandoned Marxism–Leninism. The party formed a government after the Constitutional Assembly elections of 1990, a non-partisan government led by Dimitar Popov took over until the next elections in October 1991. In the aftermath the party was confined to opposition, as part of the Democratic Left coalition, it helped form a new government in 1995, headed by BSP leader Zhan Videnov as Prime Minister. Its term ended at the end of 1996, after the country entered into a spiral of hyperinflation, large-scale demonstrations in the cities and a general strike prevented the formation of a new socialist government. In 2001, party chairman Georgi Parvanov was elected President of Bulgaria on the second round, Parvanov resigned as party chairman and was succeeded by Sergei Stanishev. The cabinet was headed by the minister and BSP chairman Sergei Stanishev. In 2006, Georgi Parvanov was reelected president in a landslide, in 2007, Bulgaria joined the European Union. Later, the triple-coalition lost millions of Euros of European financial aid in the wake of allegations of political corruption. The cabinet was unable to react to the encroaching world economic crisis. In the 2009 parliamentary elections, the BSP was defeated by the new conservative party GERB, obtaining 37 out of 240 parliamentary seats, in the 2013 parliamentary elections the party took 26. 6% of the votes, second behind GERB with 30. 5%. Nevertheless, the candidate for prime minister, Plamen Oresharski, and his proposed government were elected with the parliament support of the BSP. The appointment of the media mogul Delyan Peevski as head of the state security agency DANS. Demonstrations urging the government to step down continued until the government resigned in July of the following year, the following is a summary of BSPs results in legislative elections for the Bulgarian National Assembly

10.
Lyudmila Zhivkova
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Lyudmila Todorova Zhivkova was the daughter of Bulgarian Communist leader Todor Zhivkov, who reached the rank of senior Bulgarian Communist Party functionary and Politburo member. She studied history at Sofia University and history of art at Moscow State University, before researching a book on British-Turkish relations at St Antonys College, Oxford. She then became assistant president of the Committee for Art and Culture, its first vice president, Zhivkova was a deputy in the 7th and 8th National Assembly of Bulgaria. Moreover, as daughter of the head of Party and state, Zhivkova was often seen as heir apparent, thus, Zhivkova and her second husband Ivan Slavkov held renowned Friday soirées at their central Sofia apartment, offering opportunities for those with a cause to lobby her father indirectly. Zhivkova is credited with cutting across red tape and ensuring the construction of Sofias enormous. Another of her achievements was the opening of Sofias National Gallery of World Art, for whose collection a number of foreign paintings. In line with her pet idea of rounded personalities, shortly before her death Zhivkova produced the Banner of Peace world childrens assembly in Sofia under the aegis of Unesco and she also helped establish the 1300 Years of Bulgaria Foundation, a quasi-independent entity to endow the arts. Alongside bringing foreign culture to Bulgaria, Zhivkova did much to permit and encourage Bulgarian artists to travel abroad for study and she also organised the Thracian Gold Treasures from Bulgaria travelling exhibition which visited over 25 world cities, bringing much acclaim. During the last decade of her life, Zhivkova developed intense interests in Eastern culture, New Age matters, religious mysticism, and the occult. In this connection she developed a close relationship with the Petrich Oracle. Later, Zhivkova allegedly developed additional interests in Native American and particularly native Mexican beliefs, in connection with her esoteric interests, she designated 1978 Roerich Year, having encountered like-minded scion of Russian émigrés Svetoslav Roerich in India in 1975. A Postage stamp with a portrait of Nicholas Roerich by his son Svetoslav was issued in that year, Zhivkova died at the age of 38 from a brain tumor. Unsubstantiated rumors continue to circulate that perhaps Zhivkova was murdered by those who disapproved of her esoteric interests, as the daughter of the communist leader, Zhivkova was accorded a very large public funeral in Bulgaria. Public places and edifices were named after Lyudmila Zhivkova, yet her ideas on rounded personalities, Todor Zhivkov soon removed most of her protégés from their influential positions. Some of those were accused of misappropriating public funds intended for the arts, Lyudmila Zhivkovas heritage remains disputed in Bulgaria. Some claim that she was the harbinger of alternative ideas, freedom and spirituality, others see her as the archetypal dissolute, spoilt, confused, imperious, and eternally unfulfilled child of the Red Bourgeoisie. This minority view reflects the negative assessments of Zhivkovas father. After being adopted by her grandfather, Zheni Zhivkova became a fashion designer, a boulevard in the capital was named after her, but later renamed after 1990

Lyudmila Zhivkova
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Elena Ceausescu (left) with Lyudmila Zhivkova (marked by blue X) in 1977.
Lyudmila Zhivkova
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Lyudmila Zhivkova during her visit to India in the late 1970s with her distinctive turban
Lyudmila Zhivkova
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Zhivkova in 1978.

11.
Eastern Bloc
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The Eastern Bloc was the group of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact. The terms Communist Bloc and Soviet Bloc were also used to denote groupings of states aligned with the Soviet Union, although these terms might include states outside Central and Eastern Europe. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who viewed the Soviet Union as a socialist island, Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in northern Romania were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence. Lithuania was added in a secret protocol in September 1939. During the Occupation of East Poland by the Soviet Union, the Soviets liquidated the Polish state, Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization of the newly Soviet-annexed areas. Soviet authorities collectivized agriculture, and nationalized and redistributed private and state-owned Polish property, the international community condemned this initial annexation of the Baltic states and deemed it illegal. In June 1941, Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by invading the Soviet Union, from the time of this invasion to 1944, the areas annexed by the Soviet Union were part of Germanys Ostland. Thereafter, the Soviet Union began to push German forces westward through a series of battles on the Eastern Front, from 1943 to 1945, several conferences regarding Post-War Europe occurred that, in part, addressed the potential Soviet annexation and control of countries in Central Europe. I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he wont try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace. While meeting with Stalin and Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943, Churchill stated that Britain was vitally interested in restoring Poland as an independent country, Britain did not press the matter for fear that it would become a source of inter-allied friction. In February 1945, at the conference at Yalta, Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of influence in Central Europe. Stalin eventually was convinced by Churchill and Roosevelt not to dismember Germany, after resistance by Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin promised a re-organization of the current pro-Soviet government on a broader democratic basis in Poland. He stated that the new primary task would be to prepare elections. In addition to reparations, Stalin pushed for war booty, which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation, a clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations. At first, the Soviets concealed their role in other Eastern Bloc politics, as a young communist was told in East Germany, its got to look democratic, but we must have everything in our control. Moscow-trained cadres were put into crucial power positions to fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation, elimination of the bourgeoisies social and financial power by expropriation of landed and industrial property was accorded absolute priority. These measures were publicly billed as reforms rather than socioeconomic transformations, the bloc system permitted the Soviet Union to exercise domestic control indirectly. Crucial departments such as responsible for personnel, general police, secret police

12.
Republics of the Soviet Union
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The Republics of the Soviet Union or the Union Republics of the Soviet Union were ethnically based proto-states that were subordinated directly to the Government of the Soviet Union. Article 81 of the Constitution stated that the rights of Union Republics shall be safeguarded by the USSR. In the final decades of its existence, the Soviet Union officially consisted of fifteen Soviet Socialist Republics, all of them, with the exception of the Russian Federation, had their own local party chapters of the All-Union Communist Party. In 1944, amendments to the All-Union Constitution allowed for branches of the Red Army for each Soviet Republic. They also allowed for Republic-level commissariats for foreign affairs and defense and this allowed for two Soviet Republics, Ukraine and Byelorussia, to join the United Nations General Assembly as founding members in 1945. All of the former Republics of the Union are now independent countries, however, most of the international community did not consider the Baltic countries to have legitimately been part of the USSR. Their position is supported by the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights, the United Nations Human Rights Council, in contrast, the Russian government and state officials maintain that the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states was legitimate. Constitutionally, the Soviet Union was a federation, in accordance with provisions present in the Constitution, each republic retained the right to secede from the USSR. Under the constitution adopted in 1936 and modified along the way until October 1977, along with the state administrative hierarchy, there existed a parallel structure of party organizations, which allowed the Politburo to exercise large amounts of control over the republics. State administrative organs took direction from the party organs, and appointments of all party. Each republic had its own set of state symbols, a flag, a coat of arms, and, with the exception of Russia until 1990. Every republic of the Soviet Union also was awarded with the Order of Lenin, number of the union republics of the USSR varied from 4 to 16. In majority of years and at the decades of its existence. The Soviet Union considered the initial annexation legal, but officially recognized their independence on September 6,1991, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia, in winter of 1919 The Lithuanian–Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in 1919 but fell very soon. The Persian Socialist Soviet Republic, in what is now Iran, the Turkestan Soviet Federative Republic was proclaimed in 1918 but did not survive to the founding of the USSR, becoming the short-lived Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the RSFSR. When the Tuvan Peoples Republic joined the Soviet Union in 1944, it did not become a union republic, the leader of the Peoples Republic of Bulgaria, Todor Zhivkov, suggested in the early 1960s that the country should become a union republic, but the offer was rejected. During the Soviet–Afghan War, the Soviet Union proposed to annex the Northern Afghanistan as its 16th union republic in what was to become the Afghan Soviet Socialist Republic, though administratively part of their respective Union Republics, ASSRs were also established based on ethnic/cultural lines. Under Mikhail Gorbachev, openness and restructuring were intended to liberalise, however, they had a number of effects which caused the power of the republics to increase

Republics of the Soviet Union
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A hall in Bishkek 's Soviet-era Lenin Museum decked with the flags of Soviet Republics
Republics of the Soviet Union
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Eastern Bloc

13.
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic
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It was established in December 1920, when the Soviets took over control of the short-lived First Republic of Armenia and lasted until 1991. On August 23,1990, it was renamed the Republic of Armenia after its sovereignty was declared and its independence was recognized on 26 December 1991 when the Soviet Union ceased to exist. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the state of the post-Union Republic of Armenia existed until the adoption of the new constitution in 1995, the modern Armenian Hayastan derives from earlier Armenian Hayk’ and Persian -stān. Hayk’ derives from Old Armenian Haykʿ, traditionally derived from a legendary patriarch named Hayk, aram above was considered to be one of his descendants. Officially, the name of the republic was the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic as defined by the 1937 and 1978 constitutions. From 1828 with the Treaty of Turkmenchay to the October Revolution in 1917, Eastern Armenia was part of the Russian Empire, after the October Revolution, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenins government announced that minorities in the empire could pursue a course of self-determination. Following the collapse of the empire, in May 1918 Armenia, a number of Armenians joined the advancing 11th Soviet Red Army. The medieval Armenian capital of Ani, as well as the icon of the Armenian people Mount Ararat, were located in the ceded area. Additionally, Joseph Stalin, then acting Commissar for Nationalities, granted the areas of Nakhchivan, the republic began under the name the Socialist Soviet Republic of Armenia in 1920. From March 12,1922 to December 5,1936, Armenia was a part of the Transcaucasian SFSR together with the Georgian SSR, the Red Army, which was campaigning in Georgia at the time, returned to suppress the revolt and drove its leaders out of Armenia. With the introduction of the New Economic Policy, Armenians began to enjoy a period of relative stability, life under the Soviet rule proved to be a soothing balm in contrast to the turbulent final years of the Ottoman Empire. The Armenians received medicine, food, as well as other provisions from the central government, the situation was difficult for the Armenian Apostolic Church, however, which became a regular target of criticism in educational books and in the media and struggled greatly under Communism. After the death of Vladimir Lenin in January 1924, there was a power struggle in the Soviet Union. Armenian society and its economy were changed by Stalin and his fellow Moscow policymakers, in 1936, the TSFSR was dissolved under Stalins orders and the socialist republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia were established instead. For the Armenian people, conditions grew worse under Stalins rule, in a period of twenty-five years, Armenia was industrialized and educated under strictly prescribed conditions, and nationalism was harshly suppressed. Stalin took several measures in persecuting the Armenian Church, already weakened by the Armenian Genocide, in the 1920s, the private property of the church was confiscated and priests were harassed. Soviet assaults against the Armenian Church accelerated under Stalin, beginning in 1929, in 1932, Khoren Muradpekyan became known as Khoren I and assumed the title of His Holiness the Catholicos. However, in the late 1930s, the Soviets renewed their attacks against the Church and this culminated in the murder of Khoren in 1938 as part of the Great Purge, and the closing of the Catholicosate of Echmiatsin on August 4,1938

Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic
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Armenians crowding around the building in Yerevan where the 1920 plenum officially declared Armenia a Soviet republic
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic
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Flag
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic
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First Secretary of the Armenian Communist Party Aghasi Khanjian, a native of Van and a devoted communist, is widely believed to have been executed in 1936 by Lavrentiy Beria.
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic
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Tankers and mechanized infantry from the 119th "Sasuntsi-Davit" Tank Regiment, a unit composed primarily of Soviet Armenians, stand next to their T-34/85 tanks. The name of the regiment can be seen inscribed in the Armenian script on the turrets of the tanks.

14.
Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic
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Established on 28 April 1920 as the Azerbaijan SSR, from 12 March 1922 to 5 December 1936, it was part of the Transcausasian SFSR together with the Armenian SSR and the Georgian SSR. In December 1922, the Transcaucasian SFSR became part of the newly established Soviet Union, the Constitution of Azerbaijan SSR was approved by the 9th Extraordinary All-Azerbaijani Congress of Soviets on 14 March 1937. On 19 November 1990, Azerbaijan SSR was renamed the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Constitution of the Azerbaijan SSR ceased to exist in 1995, upon the adoption of the new Constitution of Azerbaijan. The name Azerbaijan originates as the Land of Atropates, an Achaemenid then Hellenistic-era king over a region in present-day Iranian Azarbaijan and Iranian Kurdistan, despite this difference, the present name was chosen by the Musavat to replace the Russian names Transcaucasia and Baku in 1918. Azerbaijan derives from Persian Āzarbāydjān, from earlier Ādharbāyagān and Ādharbādhagān, from Middle Persian Āturpātākān, from its founding it was officially known as the Azerbaijan Socialist Soviet Republic. Upon independence, it was renamed to the Republic of Azerbaijan in 1991, the current official name was retained after the new Constitution of Azerbaijan was adopted in 1995. On 13 October 1921, the Soviet republics of Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the previously independent Naxicivan SSR would also become an autonomous ASSR within Azerbaijan by the Treaty of Kars. Borders of Azerbaijan and Armenia, like elsewhere in the USSR, were several times. On 12 March 1922 the leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenian, and this was the first attempt at a union of Soviet republics, preceding the USSR. The Union Council of TSFSR consisted of the representatives of the three republics – Nariman Narimanov, Polikarp Mdivani, and Aleksandr Fyodorovich Miasnikyan, the First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Communist Party was Sergo Ordzhonikidze. In December 1922 TSFSR agreed to join the union with Russia, Ukraine, the TSFSR, however, did not last long. In December 1936, the Transcaucasian Union was finally dismantled when the leaders in the Union Council found themselves unable to come to agreement over several issues, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia then became union Republics of the Soviet Union directly. In the spring of 1921, a general change-over from revkoms, in order to help the Azerbaijani oil industry the Supreme Council of the National Economy decided in the same year to provide it with everything necessary out of turn. The new oilfields, like Ilyich Bay, Qara-Chukhur, Lok-Batan, in 1929 a great kolkhoz movement had developed and Azerbaijan became the second Soviet tea producer after the Georgian SSR for the first time. On 31 March 1931 the oil industry of the Azerbaijan SSR, the republic gained the second Order on 15 March 1935 during the observation of its 15th anniversary. At the end of the second five-year plan Azerbaijan appeared at 3rd place in the Soviet Union by its capital investment size, in 1938, the Azerbaijani alphabet was changed from Latin to Cyrillic alphabet. During the period 17 September 1939 to 21 June 1941, the Soviet Union was Nazi Germanys most important ally, in April,1940, intelligence flights by the British and French Air Forces passed over the Absheron Peninsula. Great Britain and France seriously considered the possibility of bombing the Republics oil fields and this changed when Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941

15.
Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic
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To the west it bordered Poland. Within the Soviet Union, it bordered Lithuania and Latvian to the north, the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia was declared by the Bolsheviks on 1 January 1919 following the declaration of independence by the Belarusian Democratic Republic in March 1918. In 1922, the BSSR was one of the four founding members of the Soviet Union, together with the Ukrainian SSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, Byelorussia was one of several Soviet republics occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II. This non-sovereign country of several million was a UN-founding-member, towards the final years of the Soviet Republics existence, the Supreme Soviet of Byelorussian SSR adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty on 27 July 1990. On 15 August 1991, Stanislau Shushkevich was elected as the countrys first president, ten days later on 25 August 1991, Byelorussian SSR declared its independence and renamed to the Republic of Belarus. The Soviet Union was dissolved four months later on December 26,1991 and this asserted that the territories are all Russian and all the peoples are also Russian, in the case of the Belarusians, they were variants of the Russian people. Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the term White Russia caused some confusion as it was also the name of the force that opposed the red Bolsheviks. During the period of the Byelorussian SSR, the term Byelorussia was embraced as part of a national consciousness, in western Belarus under Polish control, Byelorussia became commonly used in the regions of Białystok and Grodno during the interwar period. Upon the establishment of the Byelorussian Socialist Soviet Republic in 1920, in 1936, with the proclamation of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, the republic was renamed to the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic transposing the second and third words. On August 25,1991 the Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR renamed the Soviet republic to the Republic of Belarus, conservative forces in the newly independent Belarus did not support the name change and opposed its inclusion in the 1991 draft of the Constitution of Belarus. Prior to the First World War, Belarusian lands were part of the Russian Empire, during the War, the Russian Western Fronts Great retreat in August/September 1915 ended with the lands of Grodno and most of Vilno guberniyas occupied by Germany. The abdication of the Tsar in light of the February Revolution in Russia in early 1917, as central authority waned, different political and ethnic groups strived for greater self-determination and even secession from the increasingly ineffective Russian Provisional Government. The momentum picked up after the incompetent actions of the 10th Army during the ill-fated Kerensky Offensive during the summer. On 26 November, the committee of workers, peasants and soldiers deputies for the Western Oblast was merged with the Western fronts executive committee. During the autumn 1917/winter of 1918, the Western Oblast was headed by Aleksandr Myasnikyan as head of the Western Oblasts Military Revolutionary Committee, Myasnikyan took over as chair of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Partys committee for Western Oblast and Moisey Kalmanovich as chair of the Obliskomzap. As a result, on 7th of December, when the first All-Belarusian congress convened, a cease-fire was quickly agreed and proper peace negotiations began in December. The German Operation Faustschlag was of immediate success and within 11 days, they were able to make a serious advance eastward, taking over Ukraine, Baltic states and this forced the Obliskomzap to evacuate to Smolensk. The Smolensk guberniya was passed to the Western Oblast, faced with the German demands, the Bolsheviks accepted their terms at the final Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which was signed on 3 March 1918

16.
Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Estonia or Estonia was a republic of the Soviet Union, administered by a subordinate of the Government of the Soviet Union. The Estonian SSR was subsequently incorporated into the USSR on August 9,1940, the territory was occupied by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944. Most countries did not recognise the incorporation of Estonia de jure, a number of these countries continued to recognize Estonian diplomats and consuls who still functioned in the name of their former government. This policy of non-recognition gave rise to the principle of legal continuity, on 16 November 1988, the Estonian SSR became the first republic within the Soviet sphere of influence to declare state sovereignty from Moscow. On 30 March 1990, the Estonian SSR declared that Estonia had been occupied since 1940, the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic was renamed as the Republic of Estonia on May 8,1990. As part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Estonia came within the Soviet sphere of interest and was incorporated into the Soviet Union as a Soviet Socialist Republic, the history of Soviet Estonia formally begins with the establishment of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1941. The Secret Additional Protocol of the German–Soviet Nonaggression Pact signed on August 23,1939, on September 24,1939, warships of the Soviet Navy appeared off Estonian ports and Soviet bombers began patrolling over the area around Tallinn. Moscow demanded that Estonia allow the USSR to establish Soviet military bases, the government of Estonia accepted the ultimatum, signing the corresponding mutual assistance agreement on September 28,1939. On June 12,1940, according to the director of the Russian State Archive of the Naval Department Pavel Petrov, on June 14, the Soviet military blockade of Estonia went into effect while the world’s attention was focused on the fall of Paris to Nazi Germany. Two Soviet bombers downed a Finnish passenger airplane Kaleva flying from Tallinn to Helsinki carrying three diplomatic pouches from the U. S. legations in Tallinn, Riga and Helsinki, on June 16, Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Estonia. The Estonian government decided, according to the Kellogg–Briand Pact, to not respond to the Soviet ultimatums by military means, given the overwhelming Soviet force both on the borders and inside the country, the order was given not to resist in order to avoid bloodshed and open war. Most of the Estonian Defence Forces and the Estonian Defence League surrendered according to the orders and were disarmed by the Red Army, only the Estonian Independent Signal Battalion stationed at Raua Street in Tallinn showed resistance. As the Red Army brought in additional reinforcements supported by six armoured fighting vehicles, there was one dead, several wounded on the Estonian side and about 10 killed and more wounded on the Soviet side. Finally the military resistance was ended with negotiations and the Independent Signal Battalion surrendered and was disarmed, by June 18, military operations of the occupation of the Baltic States were complete. Thereafter, state administrations were liquidated and replaced by Soviet cadres, time magazine reported on June 24, that Half a million men and countless tanks of the Soviet Red Army moved to safeguard frontier against conquest-drunk Germany, one week before the Fall of France. On June 21,1940, the Soviet occupation of the Republic of Estonia was complete, the Flag of Estonia was replaced with a Red flag on Pikk Hermann tower. On July 14–15, rigged, extraordinary, single-party parliamentary elections were held, only peoples enemies stay at home on election day. Each ballot carried only the Soviet-assigned candidates name, with the way to register opposition being to strike out that name on the ballot

Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic
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A propaganda poster from the Stalin era. The poster says: "The spirit of the great Lenin and his victorious banner encourage us now to the Patriotic War."
Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic
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Flag
Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic
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Soviet prison doors on display in the Museum of Occupations, Tallinn, Estonia.
Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic
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Border changes of Estonia after World War II.

17.
Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic
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Georgia, formally the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, also commonly known as Soviet Georgia was one of the republics of the Soviet Union from its inception in 1922 to its breakup in 1991. From November 18,1989, the Georgian SSR declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws, geographically, the Georgian SSR was bordered by Turkey to the south-west and the Black Sea to the west. Within the Soviet Union it bordered the Russian SFSR to the north, Armenian SSR to the south, on November 28,1917, after the October Revolution in Russia, there was a Transcaucasian Commissariat established in Tiflis. A moderate, multi-party democratic system led by the Social Democratic Party of Georgia operated in the Democratic Republic of Georgia, but in February 1921, the Red Army invaded Georgia. The Socialist Soviet Republic of Georgia was established on February 25,1921, on March 2 of the following year the first constitution of Soviet Georgia was accepted. From March 12,1922 to December 5,1936 it was part of the Transcaucasian SFSR together with the Armenian SSR, in 1936, the TSFSR was dissolved. In 1936, the TSFSR was dissolved and Georgia became the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, lavrentiy Beria became head of the Georgian OGPU and purged Georgia until he was transferred to Moscow in 1938. Reaching the Caucasus oilfields was one of the objectives of Hitlers invasion of the USSR in June 1941. The country contributed almost 700,000 fighters to the Red Army and he abolished their respective autonomous republics. The Georgian SSR was briefly granted some of their territory until 1957, the decentralisation program introduced by Khrushchev in the mid-1950s was soon exploited by Georgian Communist Party officials to build their own regional power base. A thriving pseudo-capitalist shadow economy emerged alongside the official state-owned economy, corruption was at a high level. Among all the republics, Georgia had the highest number of residents with high or special secondary education. Although corruption was hardly unknown in the Soviet Union, it became so widespread, shevardnadze ascended to the post of First Secretary with the blessings of Moscow. He was an effective and able ruler of Georgia from 1972 to 1985, improving the official economy, Soviet power and Georgian nationalism clashed in 1978 when Moscow ordered revision of the constitutional status of the Georgian language as Georgias official state language. Bowing to pressure from street demonstrations on April 14,1978. April 14 was established as a Day of the Georgian Language, on April 9,1989, Soviet troops were used to break up a peaceful demonstration at the government building in Tbilisi. Twenty Georgians were killed and hundreds wounded and poisoned, the event radicalised Georgian politics, prompting many - even some Georgian communists - to conclude that independence was preferable to continued Soviet unity. On October 28,1990, democratic elections were held

18.
Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic
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It was created on December 5,1936 from the Kazakh ASSR, an autonomous republic of the Russian SFSR. At 2,717,300 square kilometres in area, it was the second largest republic in the USSR, today it is the independent state of Kazakhstan in Central Asia. During its existence as a Soviet republic it was led by the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR, on October 25,1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh SSR declared its sovereignty on its soil. Nursultan Nazarbayev was elected as president – a role he has remained in to this day, the Soviet republic was renamed the Republic of Kazakhstan on December 10,1991, which declared its independence six days later, on December 16,1991. The Soviet Union was disbanded on December 26,1991 by the Soviet of Nationalities, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the legal successor to the Kazakh SSR, was admitted to the United Nations on March 2,1992. The country is named after the Kazakh people, Turkic-speaking former nomads who sustained a powerful khanate in the region before Russian and then Soviet domination. The Soviet Unions spaceport, now known as the Baikonur Cosmodrome, was located in this republic at Tyuratam, established on August 26,1920, it was initially called Kirghiz ASSR and was a part of the Russian SFSR. On April 15–19,1925, it was renamed Kazak ASSR and on December 5,1936 it was elevated to the status of a Union-level republic, Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. Between 1932 and 1933, a famine struck Kazakhstan, killing 1.5 million people during the catastrophe of whom 1.3 million were ethnic Kazakhs, during the 1950s and 1960s Soviet citizens were urged to settle in the Virgin Lands of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. The influx of immigrants, mostly Russians, skewed the ethnic mixture, independence has caused many of these newcomers to emigrate. Only 168-200 civilians were killed or executed, the events were then spilled over to Shymkent, Pavlodar, Karaganda and Taldykorgan. On March 25,1990, Kazakhstan held its first elections with Nursultan Nazarbayev, later that year on October 25, it then declared sovereignty. The republic participated in a referendum to preserve the union in a different entity with 94. 1% voted in favor and it did not happened when hardline communists in Moscow took control of the government in August. Nazarbayev then condemned the failed coup, as a result of those events, the Kazakh SSR was renamed to the Republic of Kazakhstan on December 10,1991. It became independent on December 16, becoming the last republic to secede and its capital was the site of the Alma-Ata Protocol on December 21,1991 that dissolved the Soviet Union and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place which Kazakhstan joined. The Soviet Union officially ceased to exist as a state on December 26,1991. On January 28,1993, the new Constitution of Kazakhstan was officially adopted, according to the 1897 census, the earliest census taken in the region, Kazakhs constituted 81. 7% of the total population within the territory of contemporary Kazakhstan. The Russian population in Kazakhstan was 454,402, or 10, table, Ethnic Composition of Kazakhstan One of the greatest factors that shaped the ethnic composition of Kazakhstan was 1920s and 1930s famines

19.
Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic
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Landlocked and mountainous, it bordered the Tajikistan and China to the south, Uzbekistan to the west and Kazakhstan to the north. The Kirghiz branch of the Soviet Communist Party governed the republic from 1936 until 1990, on 15 December 1990, the Kirghiz SSR was renamed to Socialist Republic of Kirghizia after declaring its state sovereignty. On 31 August 1991, it transformed into independent Kyrgyzstan, the name Kyrgyz is believed to have been derived from the Turkic word for forty, in reference to the forty clans of Manas, a legendary hero who united forty regional clans against the Uyghurs. The name Kyrgyz or Kirghiz means Land of the forty tribes, politically, the name of the republic was the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic as stated in the 1937 and 1978 Constitutions of the Kirghiz SSR. From 30 October 1990 to 15 December 1990, it was renamed the Socialist Republic of Kirghizia, afterwards, the Socialist suffix was dropped and it became the Republic of Kirghizia, which retained this name after independence. Established on 14 October 1924 as the Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Oblast of the RSFSR, it was transformed into the Kirghiz ASSR on 1 February 1926, the borders were not divided however by ethnic or linguistic lines. At the time of formation of Kirghizia, its territory was divided into districts, on November 21,1939 five oblasts were created, Jalal-Abad, Issyk Kul, Osh, Tyan Shan, and Frunze Oblasts. Tyan Shan Oblast was abolished in 1962, when the rest of the country with the exception of Osh was divided into districts of republican subordination, in 1970, Issyk-Kul and Naryn were defined, and in 1980 so was Talas. In 1988, the Naryn and Talas oblasts were again abolished, at the same time, Jalal-Abad and Chui were reestablished. These districts were known for their heavy application of fertilizers after independence. The Osh Massacre in 1990 undermined the position of the first secretary and that same year, on 15 December, the Kirghiz SSR was reconstituted as the Republic of Kyrgyzstan after declaring its sovereignty. On 17 March 1991, Kirghizia supported the Union preservation referendum with an 95. 98% turnout, however, this did not come to pass when the hardliners took control of Moscow for three days in August 1991. Askar Akayev, the first president unequivocally condemned the putsch and gained fame as a democratic leader, the country declared its independence on 31 August 1991 and the Soviet Union was formally dissolved on 26 December 1991. However, the 1978 constitution remained in effect after its independence until 1993, similar to that of the Soviet republics, Kirghizias government took place in the framework of a one-party socialist republic with the Communist Party of Kirghizia as the sole legal political party. In 1926, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic had a population of 1,002,000 people, in 19391,458,000 people were recorded. The population grew significantly in the decades after World War II, the republic had 2,065,837 people in 1959,2,932,805 people in 1970, and 3,529,030 people in 1979. In the final Soviet census of 1989, the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic had grown to 4,257,755 people, the majority of the population were ethnic Kyrgyz people. However, because numbers were sent here in deportations, at times there were significant other ethnic groups

20.
Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Latvia or Latvia, was a republic of the Soviet Union. Its territory was conquered by Nazi Germany in June–July 1941. Soviet rule came to the end during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and restoring its former state symbols - flag and anthem. The full independence of the Republic of Latvia was restored on 21 August 1991, during the 1991 Soviet coup détat attempt, on September 24,1939, the USSR entered the airspace of Estonia, flying numerous intelligence gathering operations. On September 25, Moscow demanded that Estonia sign a Soviet–Estonian Mutual Assistance Treaty that would allow the USSR to establish military bases, Latvia was next in line, as the USSR demanded the signing of a similar treaty. The authoritarian government of Kārlis Ulmanis accepted the ultimatum, signing the Soviet–Latvian Mutual Assistance Treaty on October 5,1939. On June 16,1940, after the USSR had already invaded Lithuania, hundreds of thousands Soviet troops entered Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. These additional Soviet military forces far outnumbered the armies of each country, the Latvian army did not fire a shot and was quickly decimated by purges and included in the Red Army. Ulmanis government resigned and was replaced by a government created under instructions from the USSR embassy. Up until the elections of the Peoples Parliament on July 14–15,1940 there were no public statements about governmental plans to introduce a Soviet political order or to join the Soviet Union. Soon after the occupation, the Communist Party of Latvia was legalized as the legal party. It was the only permitted participant in the election, after an attempt by other politicians to include the Democratic Bloc on the ballot was prevented by the government and its office was closed, election leaflets confiscated and its leaders arrested. The election results themselves were fabricated, the Soviet press service released them so early that they appeared in a London newspaper a full 24 hours before the polls had closed, all Soviet army personnel present in the country were allowed to vote. The newly elected Peoples Parliament convened on 21 July to declare the creation of the Latvian SSR, on August 5, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union completed the process of annexation by accepting the Latvian petition, and formally incorporated Latvia into the Soviet Union. Some of the Latvian diplomats stayed in the West and the Latvian Diplomatic Service continued to advocate the cause of Latvias freedom for the next 50 years. Therefore, the history of Soviet Latvia can broadly be divided in the periods of rule by the First Secretaries, Jānis Kalnbērziņš, Arvīds Pelše, Augusts Voss, in the following months of 1940 the Soviet Constitution and criminal code were introduced. The sham elections of July 1940 were followed by elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in January 1941, the remaining Baltic Germans and anyone who could claim to be one emigrated to the German Reich. On August 7,1940 all print media and printing houses were nationalized, most of the existing magazines and newspapers were discontinued or appeared under new, Soviet names

21.
Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known as Soviet Lithuania or Lithuania was a republic of the Soviet Union. It existed from 1940 to 1990, between 1941 and 1944, the German invasion of the Soviet Union caused its de facto dissolution. However, with the retreat of the Germans in 1944–1945, Soviet hegemony was re-established, on 18 May 1989, the Lithuanian SSR declared state sovereignty within its borders during perestroika. On 11 March 1990, the Republic of Lithuania was declared to be re-established as an independent state, Soviet Union itself recognized Lithuanian independence on 6 September 1991. There had been an attempt to establish a Soviet government in Lithuania by the Bolshevik Red Army in 1918–1919. The Lithuanian SSR was first proclaimed on 16 December 1918, by the revolutionary government of Lithuania. The Lithuanian SSR was supported by the Red Army, but it failed to create a de facto government with any support as the Council of Lithuania had successfully done earlier. It has been suggested that the failure to conquer Poland in the Polish–Soviet War prevented the Soviets from invading Lithuania, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, stated that Lithuania was to be included into the German sphere of influence. However soon after World War II began in September 1939, and this was granted in exchange for Lublin and parts of the Warsaw province of Poland, originally ascribed to the Soviet Union, but by that time already occupied by German forces. Following the 1940 Soviet ultimatum to Lithuania and subsequent invasion of 15 June 1940, before doing so, in accordance with the Lithuanian constitution, he turned over his duties on a provisional basis to Prime Minister Antanas Merkys. The day after Smetonas departure, Merkys announced he had deposed Smetona and had taken over the presidency in his own right, on 17 June, at the behest of the Soviets, Merkys appointed a left-wing journalist, Justas Paleckis, as prime minister. Merkys then himself resigned, making Paleckis acting president as well, for all intents and purposes, Lithuania had lost its independence. Paleckis appointed a Communist-dominated peoples government with Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius as prime minister and this government dissolved the Fourth Seimas and announced elections for a Peoples Seimas on 14 July. Voters were selected with a single list provided by the Union of the Working People of Lithuania, on 3 August, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR accepted the petition and admitted the Lithuanian SSR as the 14th republic of the Soviet Union. Lithuania now maintains that since Smetona never resigned, Merkys takeover of the presidency was illegal, Lithuania was subsequently invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in June 1941. With the 1944 Soviet Baltic offensive, Soviet rule was re-established in July 1944, after both Soviet occupations, mass deportation of the Lithuanians into gulags and other forced settlements ensued. The United States refused to recognize the annexation of Lithuania or the other Baltic States, by the Soviet Union, all legal ties of the Soviet Unions sovereignty over the republic were cut as Lithuania declared the restitution of its independence. The Soviet Union claimed that this declaration was illegal, as Lithuania had to follow the process of secession mandated in the Soviet Constitution if it wanted to leave

22.
Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic
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Moldavia, officially the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, also known to as Soviet Moldavia, was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union existed from 1940 to 1991. The republic was formed on August 2,1940 from parts of Bessarabia, a region annexed from Romania on June 28 of that year, and parts of the MASSR, an autonomous republic within the Ukrainian SSR. After the Declaration of Sovereignty on June 23,1990 and until 23 May 1991 it was known as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova. From 23 May 1991 until the declaration of independence on 27 August 1991, geographically, the Moldavian SSR was bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. On August 24,1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed a 10-year non-aggression treaty, the secret protocol placed the Romanian province of Bessarabia in the Soviet sphere of influence. On June 26, four days after France sued for an armistice with the Third Reich, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was thereafter created following the entrance of Soviet troops on June 28,1940. 90% of the territory of MSSR was on the bank of the river Dniester. As such, the strategically important Black Sea coast and Danube frontage were given to the Ukrainian SSR, considered more reliable than the Moldavian SSR, by the end of World War II the Soviet Union had reconquered all of the lost territories, reestablishing Soviet authority there. On June 22,1941, during the first day of the German invasion of the Soviet Union,10 people were killed in Răzeni by Soviet authorities, a memorial was opened in 2009. The Soviet authorities targeted several socio-economic groups due to their situation, political views. They were deported to or resettled in Siberia and northern Kazakhstan, according to a report by the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania, no less than 86,604 people were arrested and deported in 1940-1941 alone. Modern Russian historians put forward a number of 90,000 for the same period. NKVD/MGB also struck at anti-Soviet groups, which were most active in 1944-1952, a de-kulakisation campaign was directed towards the rich Moldavian peasant families, which were deported to Kazakhstan and Siberia as well. Religious persecutions during the Soviet occupation targeted numerous priests, after the Soviet occupation, the religious life underwent a persecution similar to the one in Russia between the two World Wars. Other deportation campaigns were directed towards the ethnic Germans and religious minorities, collectivisation was implemented between 1949 and 1950, although earlier attempts were made since 1946. According to Charles King, there is evidence that it was caused by the Soviets and directed towards the largest ethnic group living in the countryside. The main cause was the Soviet requisitioning of large amounts of products, but it was also aggravated by war, the draught of 1946. With the regime of Nikita Khrushchev replacing that of Joseph Stalin, in the 1970s and 1980s Moldavia received substantial investment from the budget of the USSR to develop industrial, scientific facilities, as well as housing

23.
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic
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The Republic comprised sixteen autonomous republics, five autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, six krais, and forty oblasts. Russians formed the largest ethnic group, the capital of the Russian SFSR was Moscow and the other major urban centers included Leningrad, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. The Russian Soviet Republic was proclaimed on November 7,1917 as a sovereign state, the first Constitution was adopted in 1918. In 1922 the Russian SFSR signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, the economy of Russia became heavily industrialized, accounting for about two-thirds of the electricity produced in the USSR. It was, by 1961, the third largest producer of petroleum due to new discoveries in the Volga-Urals region and Siberia, trailing only the United States and Saudi Arabia. In 1974, there were 475 institutes of education in the republic providing education in 47 languages to some 23,941,000 students. A network of territorially organized public-health services provided health care, the effects of market policies led to the failure of many enterprises and total instability by 1990. On June 12,1990, the Congress of Peoples Deputies adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, on June 12,1991, Boris Yeltsin was elected the first President. On December 8,1991, heads of Russia, Ukraine, the agreement declared dissolution of the USSR by its founder states and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 12, the agreement was ratified by the Russian Parliament, therefore Russian SFSR denounced the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and de facto declared Russias independence from the USSR. On December 25,1991, following the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev as president of the Soviet Union, on December 26,1991, the USSR was self-dissolved by the Soviet of Nationalities, which by that time was the only functioning house of the Supreme Soviet. After dissolution of the USSR, Russia declared that it assumed the rights and obligations of the dissolved central Soviet government, the new Russian constitution, adopted on December 12,1993 after a constitutional crisis, abolished the Soviet system of government in its entirety. Initially, the state did not have a name and wasnt recognized by neighboring countries for five months. Meanwhile, anti-Bolsheviks coined the mocking label Sovdepia for the nascent state of the Soviets of Workers, on January 25,1918 the third meeting of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets renamed the unrecognized state the Soviet Russian Republic. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on March 3,1918, on July 10,1918, the Russian Constitution of 1918 renamed the country the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. By 1918, during the Russian Civil War, several states within the former Russian Empire seceded, internationally, in 1920, the RSFSR was recognized as an independent state only by Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania in the Treaty of Tartu and by the short-lived Irish Republic. On December 30,1922, with the creation of the Soviet Union, the final Soviet name for the republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, was adopted in the Soviet Constitution of 1936. By that time, Soviet Russia had gained roughly the same borders of the old Tsardom of Russia before the Great Northern War of 1700

24.
Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic
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The Tajik Republic was created on 5 December 1929 as a national entity for the Tajik people within the Soviet Union. On 24 August 1990, the Tajik SSR declared sovereignty in its borders, the republic was renamed to the Republic of Tajikistan on 31 August 1991 and declared its independence from the Soviet Union on 9 September 1991. Geographically, at 143,100 km2, it was bordered by Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kirghizia to the north, pakistan lies to the south, separated by the narrow Wakhan Corridor. The name Tajik refers to the name of a tribe that existed before the seventh century A. D. One of the new states created in the process of national delimitation of Soviet Central Asia in October 1924 was the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic – Uzbek SSR or Soviet Uzbekistan and its capital was established in Dyushambe, which had been a village of 3,000 in 1920. In December 1929, Tajik ASSR was detached from the Uzbek SSR, at that time, its capital was renamed Stalinabad, after Joseph Stalin, and the territory that is now northern Tajikistan was added to the new republic. Even with the territory, the Tajik SSR remained the smallest Central Asian republic. On 5 December 1936, it was renamed to the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic, with the creation of a Tajik republic defined in national terms came the creation of institutions that, at least in form, were likewise national. The first Tajik-language newspaper in Soviet Tajikistan began publication in 1926, new educational institutions also began operation at about the same time. The first state schools, available to children and adults and designed to provide basic education, opened in 1926. Under Soviet rule, Tajikistan experienced some economic and social progress, however, living standards in the republic were still among the lowest in the Union. Most people still lived in rural qishlaqs, settlements that were composed of 200 to 700 one-family houses built along a waterway, after Stalins death in March 1953, Stalinabad, was renamed to Dushanbe on 10 November 1961 as part of the De-Stalinization program. In February 1990, tensions between the Tajiks and Armenians squared off in the republics capital Dushanbe,26 people died and 565 more were injured and the Soviet troops put down the riots. Both Yaqub Salimov, the Interior Minister and the activists were convicted for the participation in the riots. Later on 24 August 1990, Tajik SSR declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws, by 1991, Tajikistan participated in a referendum in March as part of the attempt to preserve the union with a turnout of 96. 85%. However, this did not happened when hardliners took control of Moscow during the three days in August. After the failure of the coup, the Tajik SSR was renamed to the Republic of Tajikistan on 31 August 1991, on 9 September 1991, Tajikistan seceded from the Soviet Union months before the country itself ceased to exist on 26 December 1991. Conflicts after independence caused a war throughout the country over the next six years

25.
Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic
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Initially, on 7 August 1921, it was established as the Turkmen Oblast of the Turkestan ASSR before being made, on 13 May 1925, a separate republic of the USSR as the Turkmen SSR. Since then the borders of the Turkmenia were unchanged, on 22 August 1990, Turkmenia declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws. On 27 October 1991, it became independent and Turkmen SSR was renamed to Turkmenistan, geographically, Turkmenia was bordered between Iran, Afghanistan to the south, Caspian Sea to the west, Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the east. Russian attempts to encroach upon Turkmen territory began in earnest in the part of the nineteenth century. Of all the Central Asian peoples, the Turkmen put up the stiffest resistance against Russian expansion, in 1869 the Russian Empire established a foothold in present-day Turkmenistan with the foundation of the Caspian Sea port of Krasnovodsk. From there and other points, they marched on and subdued the Khiva Khanate in 1873, in 1881 the Russians under General Mikhail Skobelev besieged and captured Geok Tepe, one of the last Turkmen strongholds, northwest of Ashgabat. With the Turkmen defeat, the annexation of what is present-day Turkmenistan met with only weak resistance, later the same year, the Russians signed an agreement with the Persians and established what essentially remains the current border between Turkmenistan and Iran. In 1897 a similar agreement was signed between the Russians and Afghans, in the 1880s, a railroad was built from Krasnovodsk to Ashgabat and later extended to Tashkent. Urban areas began to develop along the railway, because the Turkmen generally were indifferent to the advent of Soviet rule in 1917, little revolutionary activity occurred in the region in the years that followed. Their armed resistance to Soviet rule was part of the larger Basmachi Revolt throughout Central Asia from the 1920s into the early 1930s, which included most of the future USSR dependencies. Although Soviet sources describe this struggle as a chapter in the republics history, it is clear that opposition was fierce. Significant numbers of Russians and other Slavs, as well as groups from various nationalities mainly from the Caucasus, modest industrial capabilities were developed, and limited exploitation of Turkmenistans natural resources was initiated. Under Soviet rule, all religious beliefs were attacked by the communist authorities as superstition, most religious schooling and religious observance were banned, and the vast majority of mosques were closed. An official Muslim Board of Central Asia with a headquarters in Tashkent was established during World War II to supervise the Islam faith in Central Asia, for the most part, the Muslim Board functioned as an instrument of propaganda whose activities did little to enhance the Muslim cause. Atheist indoctrination stifled religious development and contributed to the isolation of the Turkmen from the international Muslim community, beginning in the 1930s, Moscow kept the republic under firm control. The nationalities policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fostered the development of a Turkmen political elite, Slavs, both in Moscow and Turkmenia, closely supervised the national cadre of government officials and bureaucrats, generally, the Turkmen leadership staunchly supported Soviet policies. Foreigners and even most Soviet citizens couldnt visit the area, most Turkmen couldnt leave the republic either. The republic found itself rather unprepared for the dissolution of the Soviet Union, by a unanimous vote of its Supreme Soviet, Turkmenistan declared its sovereignty in August 1990

26.
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
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The Ukrainian SSR was a founding member of the United Nations, although it was legally represented by the All-Union state in its affairs with countries outside of the Soviet Union. From the start, the city of Kharkiv served as the republics capital. However, in 1934, the seat of government was moved to the city of Kyiv. Geographically, the Ukrainian SSR was situated in Eastern Europe to the north of the Black Sea, bordered by the Soviet republics of Moldavia, Byelorussia, the Ukrainian SSRs border with Czechoslovakia formed the Soviet Unions western-most border point. According to the Soviet Census of 1989 the republic had a population of 51,706,746 inhabitants, the name Ukraine, derived from the Slavic word kraj, meaning land or border. It was first used to part of the territory of Kievan Rus in the 12th century. The name has been used in a variety of ways since the twelfth century, after the abdication of the tsar and the start of the process of the destruction of the Russian Empire many people in Ukraine wished to establish a Ukrainian Republic. During a period of war from 1917-23 many factions claiming themselves governments of the newly born republic were formed, each with supporters. The two most prominent of them were the government in Kyiv and the government in Kharkiv, the former being the Ukrainian Peoples Republic and the latter the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. This government of the Soviet Ukrainian Republic was founded on 24–25 December 1917, in its publications it names itself either the Republic of Soviets of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Deputies or the Ukrainian Peoples Republic of Soviets. The last session of the government took place in the city of Taganrog, in July 1918 the former members of the government formed the Communist Party of Ukraine, the constituent assembly of which took place in Moscow. On 10 March 1919, according to the 3rd Congress of Soviets in Ukraine the name of the state was changed to the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic. After the ratification of the 1936 Soviet Constitution, the names of all Soviet republics were changed, transposing the second, during its existence, the Ukrainian SSR was commonly referred to as Ukraine or the Ukraine. On 24 August 1991, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic declared independence, since the adoption of the Constitution of Ukraine in June 1996, the country became known simply as Ukraine, which is the name used to this day. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, several factions sought to create an independent Ukrainian state, the most popular faction was initially the local Socialist Revolutionary Party that composed the local government together with Federalists and Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks boycotted any government initiatives most of the time, instigating several armed riots in order to establish the Soviet power without any intent for consensus, immediately after the October Revolution in Petrograd, Bolsheviks instigated the Kiev Bolshevik Uprising to support the Revolution and secure Kyiv. Due to a lack of support from the local population and anti-revolutionary Central Rada, however. Most moved to Kharkiv and received the support of the eastern Ukrainian cities, later, this move was regarded as a mistake by some of the Peoples Commissars

27.
Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic
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Uzbekistan, officially the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and the Republic of Uzbekistan, also referred to as Soviet Uzbekistan was one of the republics of the Soviet Union existed from 1924 to 1991. It was governed by the Uzbek branch of the Soviet Communist Party, from 1990 to 1991, it was the sovereign part of the Soviet Union with its own legislation. Beginning 20 June 1990, Uzbek SSR adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty within its borders, Islam Karimov became the republics inaugural president. On 31 August 1991, the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic was renamed the Republic of Uzbekistan, a doubly landlocked Soviet republic in Central Asia. Uzbekistan was bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Tajikistan to the southeast, Kirghizia to the northeast, Afghanistan to the south, the name, Uzbekistan, literally means Home of the Free, taken from an amalgamation of uz, bek, and -stan. Officially, the name Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic was the name as defined by its 1937 and 1978 Constitutions. In 1924, the borders of political units in Central Asia were changed along ethnic lines determined by Vladimir Lenin’s Commissar for Nationalities, the next year Uzbekistan became one of the republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In 1928, the collectivization of land into state farms was initiated, Uzbekistan included the Tajik ASSR until 1929, when the Tajik ASSR was upgraded to an equal status. In 1930, the Uzbek SSR capital was relocated from Samarkand to Tashkent, in 1936, Uzbekistan was enlarged with the addition of the Karakalpak ASSR taken from the Kazakh SSR in the last stages of the national delimitation in the Soviet Union. That same year in December, it was renamed to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic, further bits and pieces of territory were transferred several times between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan after World War II. In 1937–38, during the Great Purge, a number of alleged nationalists were executed, including Faizullah Khojaev, during World War II, many industries were relocated to Uzbekistan from vulnerable locations in western regions of the USSR to keep them safe. Large numbers of Russians, Ukrainians and other nationalities accompanied the factories and this included large numbers of ethnic Koreans, Crimean Tatars, and Chechens. During the Soviet period, Islam became a point for the anti-religious drives of Communist authorities. The government closed most mosques, and religious schools became anti-religious museums, on the positive side was the virtual elimination of illiteracy, even in rural areas. Only a small percentage of the population was literate before 1917, another major development, one with future catastrophic impact, was the drive initiated in the early 1960s to substantially increase cotton production in the republic. This drive led to overzealous irrigation withdrawals of irrigation water from the Amu Darya, towards the end of the Soviet–Afghan War, several troops crossed the Uzbek border from Afghanistan as part of the its withdrawal on 15 February 1989. The Communist Party was the legal party in the Uzbek SSR until 1990. The first secretary, or head, of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan was consistently an Uzbek, long-time leader of the Uzbek SSR was Sharof Rashidov, head of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan from 1959 to 1983

28.
Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
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It has been regarded as a satellite state of the Soviet Union. Several other state symbols were changed in 1960, the official name of the country was the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Conventional wisdom suggested that it would be known as simply the Czechoslovak Republic—its official name from 1920 to 1938, the traditional etymology derives it from an eponymous leader Čech who led the tribe into Bohemia. Modern theories consider it a derivative, e. g. from četa. Meanwhile, the name Slovak was taken from the Slavic Slavs as the origin of the word Slav itself remains uncertain, during the states existence, it was simply referred to Czechoslovakia or sometimes the CSSR and CSR in short. In April 1945, the Third Republic was formed, led by a National Front of six parties, the Communists were the big winners in the 1946 elections, taking a total of 114 seats. Not only was this the time a Communist party finished first in a free election anywhere in Europe during the Cold War era. Klement Gottwald, leader of the KSČ, became Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia, hope in Moscow was waning for a communist victory in the 1948 elections following a May 1947 Kremlin report concluded that reactionary elements praising western democracy had strengthened. Thereafter, Soviet Ambassador Valerian Zorin arranged the Czechoslovak coup détat, followed by the occupation of non-Communist ministers ministries, on 25 February 1948, Beneš, fearful of civil war and Soviet intervention, capitulated and appointed a Communist-dominated government who was sworn in two days later. Although members of the other National Front parties still figured, this was, for all intents and purposes. Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, the prominent minister still left who wasnt either a Communist or fellow traveler, was found dead two weeks later. On 30 May, a single list of candidates from the National Front—now an organization dominated by the Communists—was elected to the National Assembly, after passage of the Ninth-of-May Constitution on 9 June 1948, the country became a Peoples Republic until 1960. Although it was not a completely Communist document, it was enough to the Soviet model that Beneš refused to sign it. Hed resigned a week before it was ratified, and died in September. The Ninth-of-May Constitution confirmed that the KSČ possessed absolute power, as other Communist parties had in the Eastern Bloc, on 11 July 1960, the 1960 Constitution of Czechoslovakia was promulgated, changing the name of the country from the Czechoslovak Republic to the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. With the exception of the Prague Spring in the late 1960s, Czechoslovakia was characterized by the absence of democracy, in the religious sphere, atheism was officially promoted and taught. In 1969, the became a federation of the Czech Socialist Republic. Under the federation, social and economic inequities between the Czech and Slovak halves of the state were largely eliminated, a number of ministries, such as Education, were formally transferred to the two republics

29.
Socialist Republic of Romania
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The Socialist Republic of Romania refers to Romania under Marxist-Leninist one-party Communist rule that existed officially from 1947 to 1989. From 1947 to 1965, the state was known as the Romanian Peoples Republic, the country was a Soviet-aligned Eastern Bloc state with a dominant role for the Romanian Communist Party enshrined in its constitutions. As World War II ended, Romania, a former Axis member, was occupied by the Soviet Union, gradually, more members of the Communist Party and communist-aligned parties gained control of the administration and pre-war political leaders were steadily eliminated from political life. In December 1947, King Michael was induced to abdicate and the Peoples Republic of Romania was declared, at first, Romanias scarce post-war resources were drained by the SovRoms, new tax-exempt Soviet-Romanian companies that allowed the Soviet Union to control Romanias major sources of income. Another drain was the war reparations paid to the Soviet Union, in the 1950s, however, Romanias communist government began to assert more independence, inducing, for example, the withdrawal of all Soviet troops from Romania by 1958. In the 1960s and 1970s, Nicolae Ceaușescu became General Secretary of the Communist Party, Chairman of the State Council, Ceaușescus denunciation of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and a brief relaxation in internal repression helped give him a positive image both at home and in the West. However, rapid growth fueled by foreign credits gradually gave way to an austerity. A large number of people were executed or died in custody during communist Romanias existence, while judicial executions between 1945 and 1964 numbered 137, deaths in custody are estimated in the tens or hundreds of thousands. Many more were imprisoned for political, economical or other reasons and suffered abuse, geographically, it bordered the Black Sea to the east, the Soviet Union to the north and east, Hungary to the north, Yugoslavia to the west and Bulgaria to the south. Romanian forces fought under Soviet command, driving through Northern Transylvania into Hungary proper and this changed in March 1945, when Dr. Petru Groza of the Ploughmens Front, a party closely associated with the Communists, became prime minister. His government was broad-based on paper, including members of most major parties except the Iron Guard. However, the Communists held the key ministries, and most of the ministers nominally representing non-Communist parties were, like Groza himself, despite the Kings disapproval, the first Groza government brought land reform and womens suffrage. However, it brought the beginnings of Soviet domination of Romania. In the elections of 19 November 1946, the Communist-led Bloc of Democratic Parties claimed 84% of the votes, a show trial of their leadership was then arranged, and they were put in jail. Other parties were forced to merge with the Communists, in 1946 and 1947, hundreds of participants in the pro-Axis government were executed as war criminals, primarily for their involvement in the Holocaust and for attacking the Soviet Union. Antonescu himself was executed 1 June 1946, by 1947, Romania remained the only monarchy in the Eastern Bloc. On 30 December that year, Michael was at his palace in Sinaia when Groza and they presented him with a pretyped instrument of abdication and demanded that he sign it. With pro-Communist troops surrounding his palace and his lines cut

30.
East Germany
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East Germany, formally the German Democratic Republic, was an Eastern Bloc state during the Cold War period. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin, but did not include it, as a result, the German Democratic Republic was established in the Soviet Zone, while the Federal Republic was established in the three western zones. East Germany, which lies culturally in Central Germany, was a state of the Soviet Union. Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948, Soviet forces, however, remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party, though other parties participated in its alliance organisation. The economy was centrally planned, and increasingly state-owned, prices of basic goods and services were set by central government planners, rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay war reparations to the USSR. Nonetheless it did not match the growth of West Germany. Emigration to the West was a significant problem—as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people, the government fortified its western borders and, in 1961, built the Berlin Wall. Many people attempting to flee were killed by guards or booby traps. In 1989, numerous social and political forces in the GDR and abroad led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the following year open elections were held, and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR was dissolved and Germany was unified on 3 October 1990, internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin known as East Berlin which was also administered as the states de facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the rest of the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989, the official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik, usually abbreviated to DDR. West Germans, the media and statesmen purposely avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like Ostzone, Sowjetische Besatzungszone. The centre of power in East Berlin was referred to as Pankow. Over time, however, the abbreviation DDR was also used colloquially by West Germans. However, this use was not always consistent, for example, before World War II, Ostdeutschland was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe, as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt

31.
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
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Covering an area of 255,804 km², the SFRY was bordered with Italy to the west, Hungary to the north, Bulgaria and Romania to the east and Albania and Greece to the south. In addition, it included two autonomous provinces within Serbia, Kosovo and Vojvodina, the SFRY traces back to 29 June 1943 when the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia was formed during World War II. On 29 November 1945, the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed after the deposal of King Peter II thus ending the monarchy. Following the death of Tito on 4 May 1980, rising ethnic nationalism in the late 1980s led to dissidence among the multiple ethnicities within the constituent republics. This led to the federation collapsing along the borders, followed by the final downfall and breakup of the federation on 27 April 1992. The term former Yugoslavia is now commonly used retrospectively, the name Yugoslavia, an Anglicised transcription of Jugoslavija, is a composite word made-up of jug and slavija. The Serbo-Croatian, Slovene and Macedonian word jug means south, while slavija denotes a land of the Slavs, thus, a translation of Jugoslavija would be South-Slavia or Land of the South Slavs. The term is intended to denote the lands occupied by the six South Slavic nations, Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Slovenes, the full official name of the federation varied significantly between 1945 and 1992. Yugoslavia was formed in 1918 under the name Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, the name deliberately left the republic-or-kingdom question open. In 1963, amid pervasive liberal constitutional reforms, the name Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was introduced, the state is most commonly referred to by the latter name, which it held for the longest period of all. The most common abbreviation is SFRY, though SFR Yugoslavia was also used in an official capacity, particularly by the media. On 6 April 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers led by Nazi Germany, by 17 April 1941, Yugoslav resistance was soon established in two forms, the Royal Yugoslav Army and the Yugoslav Partisans. The Partisan supreme commander was Josip Broz Tito, and under his command the movement soon began establishing liberated territories which attracted the attentions of the occupying forces. The coalition of parties, factions, and prominent individuals behind the movement was the Peoples Liberation Front. The Front formed a political body, the Anti-Fascist Council for the Peoples Liberation of Yugoslavia. The AVNOJ, which met for the first time in Partisan-liberated Bihać on 26 November 1942, during 1943, the Yugoslav Partisans began attracting serious attention from the Germans. In two major operations of Fall Weiss and Fall Schwartz, the Axis attempted to stamp-out the Yugoslav resistance once, on both occasions, despite heavy casualties, the Group succeeded in evading the trap and retreating to safety. The Partisans emerged stronger than before and now occupied a significant portion of Yugoslavia

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
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U.S.-Yugoslavia summit, 1978
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
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Flag
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
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The parliament building of Bosnia and Herzegovina burns amid the Yugoslav wars.
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
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Vukovar water tower during the Siege of Vukovar. The tower came to symbolize the town's resistance to Serb forces.

32.
Tito-Stalin split
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This was the beginning of the Informbiro period, marked by poor relations with the USSR, that came to an end in 1955. During the Second World War, Yugoslavia was occupied by the Axis, at this point, Tito was loyal to Moscow. This had already led to friction between the two countries before World War II was even over. Although Tito was formally an ally of Stalin after World War II, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, there occurred several armed incidents between Yugoslavia and the Western Bloc. Following the war, Yugoslavia successfully captured the territory of Istria, as well as the cities of Zadar and this move was of direct benefit to the Slavic populations of the regions. Yugoslav leadership was looking to incorporate Trieste into the country as well and this led to several armed incidents, notably Yugoslav fighter planes shooting down American transport aircraft, causing angry criticism from the West and from Stalin. From 1945 to 1948, at least four US aircraft were shot down, Stalin was opposed to these provocations, as he felt that the USSR was unready to face the West in open war so soon after the losses of World War II. Tito planned to absorb Albania and Greece in cooperation with Bulgaria, Stalin could not tolerate that threat. However, the world saw the two countries as the closest of allies. They were thereby essentially arguing Soviet positions, the headquarters for Cominform were even set up in Belgrade. However, all was not well between the two countries, due to a number of disputes. The friction that led to the split had many causes, many of which can ultimately be linked to Titos regional focus. The Yugoslavs were of the opinion that the joint-stock companies favored in the Soviet Union were not effective in Yugoslavia. Stalin was also enraged by Titos aspirations to merge Yugoslavia with Bulgaria, an idea with which he agreed in theory and he summoned two of Titos officials, Milovan Đilas and Edvard Kardelj, to Moscow to discuss these matters. As a result of talks, Đilas and Kardelj became convinced that Yugoslav-Soviet relations had already reached an impasse. Between the trip to Moscow and the meeting of the Cominform, the Soviet Communist Party. The first CPSU letter, on March 27,1948, accused the Yugoslavs of denigrating Soviet socialism via statements such as socialism in the Soviet Union has ceased to be revolutionary. It also claimed that the CPY was not democratic enough, Stalin retorted, we cannot consider this kind of organization of the Communist Party as truly Marxist-Leninist or Bolshevik

33.
Cuba
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Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is a country comprising the island of Cuba as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and it is south of both the U. S. state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Haiti, and north of Jamaica. Havana is the largest city and capital, other cities include Santiago de Cuba. Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, with an area of 109,884 square kilometres, prior to Spanish colonization in the late 15th century, Cuba was inhabited by Amerindian tribes. It remained a colony of Spain until the Spanish–American War of 1898, as a fragile republic, Cuba attempted to strengthen its democratic system, but mounting political radicalization and social strife culminated in the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1952. Further unrest and instability led to Batistas ousting in January 1959 by the July 26 Movement, since 1965, the state has been governed by the Communist Party of Cuba. A point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, a nuclear war broke out during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America, Cuba is a Marxist–Leninist one-party republic, where the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Independent observers have accused the Cuban government of human rights abuses. It is one of the worlds last planned economies and its economy is dominated by the exports of sugar, tobacco, coffee, according to the Human Development Index, Cuba is described as a country with high human development and is ranked the eighth highest in North America. It also ranks highly in some metrics of national performance, including health care, the name Cuba comes from the Taíno language. The exact meaning of the name is unclear but it may be translated either as where fertile land is abundant, authors who believe that Christopher Columbus was Portuguese state that Cuba was named by Columbus for the town of Cuba in the district of Beja in Portugal. Before the arrival of the Spanish, Cuba was inhabited by three distinct tribes of indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Taíno, the Guanajatabey, and the Ciboney people. The ancestors of the Ciboney migrated from the mainland of South America, the Taíno arrived from Hispanola sometime in the 3rd century A. D. When Columbus arrived they were the dominant culture in Cuba, having a population of 150,000. The name Cuba comes from the native Taíno language and it is derived from either coabana meaning great place, or from cubao meaning where fertile land is abundant. The Taíno were farmers, while the Ciboney were farmers as well as fishers and hunter-gatherers, Columbus claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain and named it Isla Juana after Juan, Prince of Asturias. In 1511, the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa, other towns soon followed, including San Cristobal de la Habana, founded in 1515, which later became the capital

34.
Somali Democratic Republic
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The putsch came a few days after the assassination of Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, the nations second President, by one of his own bodyguards. Barres administration would rule Somalia for the following 21 years, until the outbreak of the war in 1991. Alongside Barre, the Supreme Revolutionary Council that assumed power after President Sharmarkes assassination was led by Lieutenant Colonel Salaad Gabeyre Kediye, Kediye officially held the title of Father of the Revolution, and Barre shortly afterwards became the head of the SRC. The SRC subsequently arrested members of the civilian government, banned political parties, dissolved the parliament and the Supreme Court. The revolutionary army established large-scale public works programs and successfully implemented an urban and rural literacy campaign and that same year, Barre also served as chairman of the Organization of African Unity, the predecessor of the African Union. In July 1976, Barres SRC disbanded itself and established in its place the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party, the SRSP was an attempt to reconcile the official state ideology with the official state religion by adapting Marxist precepts to local circumstances. While the SRSP encouraged private investment on a scale, the administrations overall direction was essentially socialist. In July 1977, the Ogaden War against Ethiopia broke out after Barres government sought to incorporate the predominantly Somali-inhabited Ogaden region into a Pan-Somali Greater Somalia, the war was part of broader SNA effort to unite all somali territories. Southern and central Ogaden was captured in the stages of conflict and for most of the war. By September 1977, Somalia controlled 90% of the Ogaden and captured strategic cities such as Jijiga and put pressure on Dire Dawa. After the siege of Harar, a massive unprecedented Soviet intervention consisting of 20,000 Cuban forces, by 1978, a ceasefire was negotiated putting an end to the war, despite this the majority of the Ogaden remained in Somali hands intill 1980 despite the odds. This shift in support by the Soviet Union motivated the Barre government to seek allies elsewhere and it eventually settled on the Soviet Unions Cold War arch-rival, the United States, which had been courting the Somali government for some time. All in all, Somalias initial friendship with the Soviet Union, after fallout from the unsuccessful Ogaden campaign, Barres administration began arresting government and military officials under suspicion of participation in the abortive 1978 coup détat. Most of the people who had helped plot the putsch were summarily executed. However, several managed to escape abroad and started to form the first of various dissident groups dedicated to ousting Barres regime by force. A new constitution was promulgated in 1979 under which elections for a Peoples Assembly were held, however, Barres Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party politburo continued to rule. In October 1980, the SRSP was disbanded, and the Supreme Revolutionary Council was re-established in its place, by that time, Barres government had become increasingly unpopular. Many Somalis had become disillusioned with life under military dictatorship, the regime was weakened further in the 1980s as the Cold War drew to a close and Somalias strategic importance was diminished

35.
Ogaden War
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The war ended when the Americans brokered a ceasefire. Despite this, large parts of the Ogaden remained in Somali hands until 1980, following World War II, Britain retained control of both British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland as protectorates. British Somaliland remained a protectorate of Britain until 1960, Britain included the provision that the Somali residents would retain their autonomy, but Ethiopia immediately claimed sovereignty over the area. This prompted an unsuccessful bid by Britain in 1956 to buy back the Somali lands it had turned over. A referendum was held in neighboring Djibouti in 1958, on the eve of Somalias independence in 1960, the referendum turned out in favour of a continued association with France, largely due to a combined yes vote by the sizable Afar ethnic group and resident Europeans. There was also widespread vote rigging, with the French expelling thousands of Somalis before the referendum reached the polls. The majority of those who voted no were Somalis who were strongly in favour of joining a united Somalia, as had proposed by Mahmoud Harbi. Harbi was killed in a crash two years later. Djibouti finally gained its independence from France in 1977, and Hassan Gouled Aptidon, British Somaliland became independent on 26 June 1960 as the State of Somaliland, and the Trust Territory of Somalia followed suit five days later. On July 1,1960, the two united to form the Somali Republic. On 20 July 1961 and through a referendum, the people of Somalia ratified a new constitution. On 15 October 1969, while paying a visit to the town of Las Anod. His assassination was followed by a military coup détat on 21 October 1969. The putsch was spearheaded by Major General Mohamed Siad Barre, who at the time commanded the army, alongside Barre, the Supreme Revolutionary Council that assumed power after President Sharmarkes assassination was led by Lieutenant Colonel Salaad Gabeyre Kediye and Chief of Police Jama Korshel. Kediye officially held the title of Father of the Revolution, the SRC subsequently renamed the country the Somali Democratic Republic, dissolved the parliament and the Supreme Court, and suspended the constitution. As Somalia gained military strength, Ethiopia grew weaker, in September 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie had been overthrown by the Derg, marking a period of turmoil. The Derg quickly fell into internal conflict to determine who would have primacy, meanwhile, various anti-Derg as well as separatist movements began throughout the country. The regional balance of power now favoured Somalia, from 1976 to 1977, Somalia supplied arms and other aid to the WSLF

36.
South Yemen
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The Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen, also referred to as South Yemen, Democratic Yemen or Yemen a. k. a. South Arabian Federation, was a socialist state in the southern and eastern provinces of the present-day Republic of Yemen and it united with the Yemen Arab Republic on 22 May 1990, to form the present-day Yemen. After four years, however, South Yemen declared its secession from the north, which resulted in the north occupying south Yemen, in 1838, Sultan Muhsin Bin Fadl of the nearby state of Lahej ceded 194 km² including Aden to the British. On 19 January 1839, the British East India Company landed Royal Marines at Aden to occupy the territory and stop attacks by pirates against British shipping to India. It then became an important trading hub between British India and the Red Sea, and following the opening of the Suez canal in 1869, Aden was ruled as part of British India until 1937, when the city of Aden became the Colony of Aden. Economic development was centered in Aden, and while the city flourished. Both of these polities were still tied to Britain with promises of independence in 1968. One faction, NLF, was invited to the Geneva Talks to sign the agreement with the British. the handover of the territory of South Arabia to the NLF. Southern Yemen became independent as the Peoples Republic of Southern Yemen on 30 November 1967, in June 1969, a radical Marxist wing of the NLF gained power and on 1 December 1970, reorganized the country into the Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen. Subsequently, all parties were amalgamated into the National Liberation Front, renamed the Yemeni Socialist Party. The Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen established close ties with the Soviet Union, the Peoples Republic of China, Cuba, East Germanys consititution of 1968 even served as a kind of blueprint for the PDRYs first constitution. The major communist powers assisted in the building of the PDRYs armed forces, strong support from Moscow resulted in Soviet naval forces gaining access to naval facilities in South Yemen. Fighting broke out in 1972, and a short-lived, small proxy border conflict was resolved with negotiations, however, these plans were put on hold in 1979, as the PDRY funded Red rebels in the YAR, and war was only prevented by an Arab League intervention. The goal of unity was reaffirmed by the northern and southern heads of state during a meeting in Kuwait in March 1979. In 1980, PDRY president Abdul Fattah Ismail resigned and went into exile in Moscow and his successor, Ali Nasir Muhammad, took a less interventionist stance toward both North Yemen and neighbouring Oman. On January 13,1986, a violent struggle began in Aden between Ali Nasirs supporters and supporters of the returned Ismail, who wanted power back. Fighting, known as the South Yemen Civil War, lasted for more than a month and resulted in thousands of casualties, Ali Nasirs ouster, some 60,000 people, including the deposed Ali Nasir, fled to the YAR. Ali Salim al-Beidh, an ally of Ismail who had succeeded in escaping the attack on members of the Politburo

37.
Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
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The PDPA came to power through a coup known as the Saur Revolution, which ousted the government of Mohammad Daoud Khan. Daoud was succeeded by Nur Muhammad Taraki as head of state, soon after taking power a power struggle began between the Khalqists led by Taraki and Amin and the Parchamites led by Babrak Karmal. The Khalqists won and the Parcham faction was purged from the party, the most prominent Parcham leaders were exiled to the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union. After the Khalq–Parcham struggle, a struggle within the Khalq faction began between Taraki and Amin. Amin won the struggle, and Taraki was killed on his orders and his rule proved unpopular within his own country, and in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union intervened, supported by the Afghan government, in December 1979, Karmal became the leader of Afghanistan in his place. The Karmal era, lasting from 1979 to 1986, is best known for the Soviet war effort in Afghanistan, the war resulted in large numbers of civilian casualties, as well as millions of refugees who fled into Pakistan and Iran. Karmals policies failed to bring peace to the country. Najibullah pursued a policy of National Reconciliation with the opposition, a new Afghan constitution was introduced in 1987, after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the government faced increasing resistance. On the military front, the government proved capable of defeating the opposition in open battle. Geographically, the DRA was bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, the Soviet Union in the north, Hafizullah Amin, a Khalq, was the coups chief architect. The first conflict between the Khalqists and Parchamites arose when the Khalqists wanted to give PDPA Central Committee membership to military officers who participated in the Saur Revolution. Amin, who opposed the appointment of military officers to the PDPA leadership, altered his position. The PDPA Politburo voted in favour of giving membership to the military officers, to make matters worse for the Parchamites, the term Parcham was, according to Taraki, a word synonymous with factionalism. On 27 June, three months after the revolution, Amin managed to outmaneuver the Parchamites at a Central Committee meeting, the meeting decided that the Khalqists had the exclusive right to formulate and decide policy, which left the Parchamites impotent. Later, a coup planned by the Parchamites, and led by Karmal, was discovered by the Khalqist leadership, the discovery of the coup prompted a swift reaction, a purge of Parchamites began. Parchamite ambassadors were recalled, but few returned, for instance, Karmal, when Taraki realized the degree of popular dissatisfaction with the reform he began to curtail the policy. Afghanistans long history of resistance to any type of strong centralized governmental control further undermined his authority, consequently, much of the land reform was not actually implemented nationwide

38.
China
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China, officially the Peoples Republic of China, is a unitary sovereign state in East Asia and the worlds most populous country, with a population of over 1.381 billion. The state is governed by the Communist Party of China and its capital is Beijing, the countrys major urban areas include Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Hong Kong. China is a power and a major regional power within Asia. Chinas landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes, the Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from much of South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third and sixth longest in the world, respectively, Chinas coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometers long and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East China and South China seas. China emerged as one of the worlds earliest civilizations in the basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, Chinas political system was based on hereditary monarchies known as dynasties, in 1912, the Republic of China replaced the last dynasty and ruled the Chinese mainland until 1949, when it was defeated by the communist Peoples Liberation Army in the Chinese Civil War. The Communist Party established the Peoples Republic of China in Beijing on 1 October 1949, both the ROC and PRC continue to claim to be the legitimate government of all China, though the latter has more recognition in the world and controls more territory. China had the largest economy in the world for much of the last two years, during which it has seen cycles of prosperity and decline. Since the introduction of reforms in 1978, China has become one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies. As of 2016, it is the worlds second-largest economy by nominal GDP, China is also the worlds largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a nuclear weapons state and has the worlds largest standing army. The PRC is a member of the United Nations, as it replaced the ROC as a permanent member of the U. N. Security Council in 1971. China is also a member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the WTO, APEC, BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the BCIM, the English name China is first attested in Richard Edens 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. The demonym, that is, the name for the people, Portuguese China is thought to derive from Persian Chīn, and perhaps ultimately from Sanskrit Cīna. Cīna was first used in early Hindu scripture, including the Mahābhārata, there are, however, other suggestions for the derivation of China. The official name of the state is the Peoples Republic of China. The shorter form is China Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó and it was then applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and then to Chinas Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing

39.
Sino-Soviet split
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In the 1960s, China and the Soviet Union were the two largest communist states in the world. The doctrinal divergence derived from Chinese and Soviet national interests, in the 1950s and the 1960s, ideological debate between the communist parties of the USSR and China also concerned the possibility of peaceful coexistence with the capitalist West. The split concerned the leadership of world communism, the USSR had a network of communist parties it supported, China now created its own rival network to battle it out for local control of the left in numerous countries. The split helped to determine the framework of the Second Cold War in general, the divide fractured the international communist movement at the time and opened the way for the warming of relations between the United States and China under Richard Nixon and Mao in 1971. Relations between China and the Soviet Union remained tense until the visit of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to Beijing in 1989, the split was primarily caused because of two main factors, differing national interests and various interpretations of communist ideology. During the Second World War Stalin urged Mao into a joint, Chiang Kai-shek received no assistance during the Berlin Blockade in 1948, because the United States Air Force was putting all its efforts towards helping the people of Berlin during that time. The Americans were preoccupied in Europe and did not turn to help Chiang Kai-sheks Kuomintang Army in China until the Kuomintang were losing the Liaoshen, Huaihai and Pingjin Campaigns. However, Mao and his supporters argued that traditional Marxism was rooted in industrialized European society, in ways of which neither Marx nor Lenin could dream, which the Soviet government banned in the USSR. However, because of tensions over the partition of Korea, and these ideas became the basis for the Great Leap Forward. However, the meeting between the two leaders was not completely positive – Mao found Khrushchev’s personality grating, and Khrushchev was unimpressed with Chinese culture, in 1955, relations only continued to improve. By this year, economic trade collaboration had begun to develop to the point that 60% of Chinese exports were to the USSR. Mao also began to implement the Chinese “Five Year Plan”, modeled after the USSR’s own successful Five Year Plans that had begun a couple of decades previously, Mao also promoted and encouraged the collectivization of agriculture in the PRC, applauding Stalin’s own policies towards agriculture and industrialization. This period, from roughly Stalin’s death in 1953 to Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” in 1956 has been called the “golden age” of Sino-Soviet relations and this is mainly through the increased economic and political cooperation as well as collaboration in international politics between the two countries. However, relations began to deteriorate in 1956 after Khrushchev revealed his “Secret Speech” at the 20th Communist Party Congress, the “Secret Speech” criticized many of Stalin’s policies, especially his purges of Party members, and marked the beginning of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization process. This created a domestic problem for Mao, who had supported many of Stalin’s policies. With Khrushchev’s denouncement of Stalin, many people questioned Mao’s own policies in China, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and conflict in Poland – a direct result of Khrushchev’s statements – also worried Mao. This event showed the beginnings of the split between the PRC and the USSR. Mao was also worried about the “peaceful coexistence” foreign policy with the West that Khrushchev began and this policy was known as the “Hundred Flowers Campaign”, but was unsuccessful and backfired against Mao, weakening his position within his own party

Sino-Soviet split
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Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier Nikita Khrushchev: publicly, international allies; privately, ideological enemies. (China, 1958).
Sino-Soviet split
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A Chinese stamp depicting Mao and Stalin shaking hands following the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship in 1950
Sino-Soviet split
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The disputed Argun and Amur river areas; the Damansky–Zhenbao is southeast, north of the lake. (2 March – 11 September 1969).
Sino-Soviet split
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The door to the nuclear war shelter complex in the tunnels of Underground Project 131, in Hubei, China.

40.
North Korea
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North Korea, officially the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, is a country in East Asia, constituting the northern part of the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang is both the capital as well as its largest city. To the north and northwest the country is bordered by China and by Russia along the Amnok, the country is bordered to the south by South Korea, with the heavily fortified Korean Demilitarized Zone separating the two. Negotiations on reunification failed, and in 1948 two separate governments were formed, the communist Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea in the north, an invasion initiated by North Korea led to the Korean War. The Korean Armistice Agreement brought about a ceasefire, and no peace treaty was ever signed. North Korea officially describes itself as a self-reliant socialist state and formally holds elections, critics regard it as a totalitarian dictatorship. Various outlets have called it Stalinist, particularly noting the elaborate cult of personality around Kim Il-sung, International organizations have assessed human rights violations in North Korea as belonging to a category of their own, with no parallel in the contemporary world. Over time, North Korea has gradually distanced itself from the world communist movement, Juche, an ideology of national self-reliance, was introduced into the constitution as a creative application of Marxism–Leninism in 1972. The means of production are owned by the state through state-run enterprises, most services such as healthcare, education, housing and food production are subsidized or state-funded. From 1994 to 1998, North Korea suffered from a famine that resulted in the deaths of between 0.24 and 3.5 million people, and the continues to struggle with food production. North Korea follows Songun, or military-first policy and it is the country with the highest number of military and paramilitary personnel, with a total of 9,495,000 active, reserve, and paramilitary personnel. Its active duty army of 1.21 million is the fourth largest in the world, after China, North Korea is an atheist state with no official religion and where public religion is discouraged. The name Korea derives from the name Goryeo, the name Goryeo itself was first used by the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo in the 5th century as a shortened form of its name. The 10th-century kingdom of Goryeo succeeded Goguryeo, and thus inherited its name, the modern spelling of Korea first appeared in the late 17th century in the travel writings of the Dutch East India Companys Hendrick Hamel. After the division of the country into North and South Korea, the two sides used different terms to refer to Korea, Chosun or Joseon in North Korea, in 1948, North Korea adopted Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea as its new legal name. After the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, Korea was occupied by Japan, Japan tried to suppress Korean traditions and culture and ran the economy primarily for its own benefit. Korean resistance groups known as Dongnipgun operated along the Sino-Korean border, some of them took part in allied action in China and parts of South East Asia. One of the leaders was the communist Kim Il-sung, who later became the leader of North Korea

North Korea
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Jikji, the first known book printed with movable metal type in 1377. Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris
North Korea
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Flag
North Korea
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Gyeongbok Palace is the largest of the Five Grand Palaces built during the Joseon Dynasty.
North Korea
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Three Koreans shot for pulling up rails as a protest against seizure of land without payment by the Japanese

41.
Vietnam
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Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. With an estimated 92.7 million inhabitants as of 2016, it is the worlds 14th-most-populous country, and its capital city has been Hanoi since the reunification of North and South Vietnam in 1976, with Ho Chi Minh City as a historical city as well. The northern part of Vietnam was part of Imperial China for over a millennium, an independent Vietnamese state was formed in 939, following a Vietnamese victory in the Battle of Bạch Đằng River. Following a Japanese occupation in the 1940s, the Vietnamese fought French rule in the First Indochina War, thereafter, Vietnam was divided politically into two rival states, North Vietnam, and South Vietnam. Conflict between the two sides intensified in what is known as the Vietnam War, the war ended with a North Vietnamese victory in 1975. Vietnam was then unified under a communist government but remained impoverished, in 1986, the government initiated a series of economic and political reforms which began Vietnams path towards integration into the world economy. By 2000, it had established relations with all nations. Since 2000, Vietnams economic growth rate has been among the highest in the world and its successful economic reforms resulted in its joining the World Trade Organization in 2007. It is also a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, Vietnam remains one of the worlds four remaining one-party socialist states officially espousing communism. The name Việt Nam is a variation of Nam Việt, a name that can be traced back to the Triệu Dynasty of the 2nd century BC. The word Việt originated as a form of Bách Việt. The form Vietnam is first recorded in the 16th-century oracular poem Sấm Trạng Trình, the name has also been found on 12 steles carved in the 16th and 17th centuries, including one at Bao Lam Pagoda in Haiphong that dates to 1558. Then, as recorded, rewarded Yuenan/Vietnam as their nations name, to also show that they are below the region of Baiyue/Bach Viet. Between 1804 and 1813, the name was used officially by Emperor Gia Long and it was revived in the early 20th century by Phan Bội Châus History of the Loss of Vietnam, and later by the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. The country was usually called Annam until 1945, when both the government in Huế and the Viet Minh government in Hanoi adopted Việt Nam. Archaeological excavations have revealed the existence of humans in what is now Vietnam as early as the Paleolithic age, Homo erectus fossils dating to around 500,000 BC have been found in caves in Lạng Sơn and Nghệ An provinces in northern Vietnam. The oldest Homo sapiens fossils from mainland Southeast Asia are of Middle Pleistocene provenance, teeth attributed to Homo sapiens from the Late Pleistocene have also been found at Dong Can, and from the Early Holocene at Mai Da Dieu, Lang Gao and Lang Cuom. The Hồng Bàng dynasty of the Hùng kings is considered the first Vietnamese state, in 257 BC, the last Hùng king was defeated by Thục Phán, who consolidated the Lạc Việt and Âu Việt tribes to form the Âu Lạc, proclaiming himself An Dương Vương

42.
Laos
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Present day Laos traces its historic and cultural identity to the kingdom of Lan Xang Hom Khao, which existed for four centuries as one of the largest kingdoms in Southeast Asia. Due to Lan Xangs central geographical location in Southeast Asia, the kingdom was able to become a hub for overland trade. After a period of conflict, Lan Xang broke off into three separate kingdoms— Luang Phabang, Vientiane and Champasak. In 1893, it became a French protectorate, with the three territories uniting to form what is now known as the country of Laos and it briefly gained independence in 1945 after Japanese occupation, but returned to French rule until it was granted autonomy in 1949. Laos became independent in 1953, with a monarchy under Sisavang Vong. Shortly after independence, a civil war ended the monarchy. Laos is a one-party socialist republic and it espouses Marxism and is governed by the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party, in which the party leadership is dominated by military figures. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the Vietnam Peoples Army continue to have significant influence in Laos, other large cities include Luang Prabang, Savannakhet, and Pakse. Laos is a country with the politically and culturally dominant Lao people making up approximately 60 percent of the population. Mon-Khmer groups, the Hmong, and other hill tribes, accounting for 40 percent of the population, live in the foothills. It is a member of the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, East Asia Summit, Laos applied for membership of the World Trade Organization in 1997, on 2 February 2013, it was granted full membership. According to the anti-corruption non-governmental organisation Transparency International, Laos remains one of the most corrupt countries in the world and this has deterred foreign investment and created major problems with the rule of law, including the nations ability to enforce contract and business regulation. This has contributed to a third of the population of Laos currently living below the poverty line. Laos has an economy, with one of the lowest annual incomes in the world. In 2014, the country ranked 141st on the Human Development Index, according to the Global Hunger Index, Laos ranks as the 29th hungriest nation in the world out of the list of the 52 nations with the worst hunger situation. Laos has also had a human rights record. In the Lao language, the name is Muang Lao or Pathet Lao. Stone artefacts including Hoabinhian types have been found at sites dating to the Late Pleistocene in northern Laos, archaeological evidence suggests agriculturist society developed during the 4th millennium BC

43.
Cominform
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Founded in 1947, Cominform is the common name for what was officially referred to as the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers Parties. The intended purpose of Cominform was to coordinate actions between Communist parties under Soviet direction and it had its own newspaper, For Lasting Peace, for Peoples Democracy. In other aspects, Cominform was also used to repel against the anti-communist expansion, Cominform was a Soviet-dominated organization of Communist parties founded in September 1947 at a conference of Communist party leaders in Szklarska Poręba, Poland. Soviet leader Josef Stalin called the conference in response to divergences among communist governments on whether or not to attend the Paris Conference on Marshall Plan in July 1947, Cominform was initially located in Belgrade. After the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the group in June 1948, the expulsion of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia from Cominform for Titoism initiated the Informbiro period in that countrys history. The Cominform was dissolved in 1956 after Soviet rapprochement with Yugoslavia and the process of De-Stalinization

44.
Comecon
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The descriptive term was often applied to all multilateral activities involving members of the organization, rather than being restricted to the direct functions of Comecon and its organs. According to some historians, Moscow was concerned about the Marshall Plan, Comecon was meant to prevent countries in the Soviets’ sphere of influence from moving towards that of the Americans and South-East Asia. Although Mongolia and Vietnam later gained full membership, China stopped attending Comecon sessions after 1961, Yugoslavia negotiated a form of associate status in the organization, specified in its 1964 agreement with Comecon. In the late 1980s there were ten members, the Soviet Union, six East European countries. Geography, therefore, no longer united Comecon members, wide variations in economic size and level of economic development also tended to generate divergent interests among the member countries. All these factors combined to give rise to significant differences in the member states expectations about the benefits to be derived from membership in Comecon, unity was provided instead by political and ideological factors. All Comecon members were united by a commonality of fundamental class interests, in 1949 the ruling communist parties of the founding states were also linked internationally through the Cominform, from which Yugoslavia had been expelled the previous year. Although the Cominform was disbanded in 1956, interparty links continued to be strong among Comecon members, Comecon provided a mechanism through which its leading member, the Soviet Union, sought to foster economic links with and among its closest political and military allies. The East European members of Comecon were also allied with the Soviet Union in the Warsaw Pact. There were three kinds of relationships – besides the 10 full memberships – with the Comecon, Yugoslavia was the country considered to have associate member status. On the basis of the 1964 agreement, Yugoslavia participated in twenty-one of the thirty-two key Comecon institutions as if it were a full member, finland, Iraq, Mexico, and Nicaragua had a nonsocialist cooperant status with Comecon. Because the governments of countries were not empowered to conclude agreements in the name of private companies. They were represented in Comecon by commissions made up of members of the government, the commissions were empowered to sign various framework agreements with Comecons Joint Commission on Cooperation. After 1957, Comecon allowed certain countries with communist or pro-Soviet governments to attend sessions as observers, in November 1986, delegations from Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Laos, Nicaragua, and the Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen attended the 42nd Council Session as observers. The Comecon was founded in 1949 by the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland had remained interested in Marshall aid despite the requirements for a convertible currency and market economies. This has been described as the moment of truth in the post-World War II division of Europe, according to the Soviet view the Anglo-American bloc and American monopolists. Furthermore, GATTs notion of nondiscriminatory treatment of trade partners was incompatible with notions of socialist solidarity, recent research by the Romanian researcher Elena Dragomir suggests that Romania played a rather important role in the Comecons creation in 1949. According to Dragomir, in December 1948, the Romanian leader Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej sent a letter to Stalin, at first, planning seemed to be moving along rapidly

Comecon
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An East German stamp celebrating the 40th anniversary of Comecon in 1989
Comecon
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Flag
Comecon
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1974 Medallion 10th Anniversary of Intermetall, that was founded in 1964 in Budapest

45.
Warsaw Pact
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The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the regional economic organization for the communist states of Central and Eastern Europe. While the Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to NATO, instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis and in proxy wars. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and its largest military engagement was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, which, in part, resulted in Albania withdrawing from the pact less than a month later. The Pact began to unravel in its entirety with the spread of the Revolutions of 1989 through the Eastern Bloc, beginning with the Solidarity movement in Poland, East Germany and Poland withdrew from the Pact in 1990. On 25 February 1991, the Pact was declared at an end at a meeting of defence, the USSR itself was dissolved in December 1991, although most of the former Soviet republics formed the Collective Security Treaty Organization shortly thereafter. Throughout the following 20 years, the seven Warsaw Pact countries outside the USSR each joined NATO, in the Western Bloc, the Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance is often called the Warsaw Pact military alliance—abbreviated WAPA, Warpac, and WP. Therefore, although ostensibly an international collective security alliance, the USSR dominated the Warsaw Treaty armed forces, the strategy behind the formation of the Warsaw Pact was driven by the desire of the Soviet Union to dominate Central and Eastern Europe. The Soviets wanted to keep their part of Europe theirs and not let the Americans take it from them and this policy was driven by ideological and geostrategic reasons. Ideologically, the Soviet Union arrogated the right to define socialism and communism, geostrategic principles also drove the Soviet Union to prevent invasion of its territory by Western European powers. Before the creation of the Warsaw Pact, Czechoslovak leadership, fearful of a rearmed Germany, sought to create a security pact with East Germany and these states protested strongly against the re-militarization of West Germany. The Warsaw Pact was primarily put in place as a consequence of the rearming of West Germany inside NATO, Soviet leaders, like many European countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain, feared Germany being once again a military power and a direct threat. The terrible consequences of German militarism remained a fresh memory among the Soviets, previously, in March 1954, the USSR, fearing the restoration of German militarism in West Germany, requested admission to NATO. The Soviet request to join NATO arose in the aftermath of the Berlin Conference of January–February 1954. James Dunn, who met in Paris with Eden, Adenauer and Robert Schuman, affirmed that the object should be to avoid discussion with the Russians, according to John Gaddis there was little inclination in Western capitals to explore this offer from USSR. But Eden, Dulles and Bidault opposed the proposal, the Soviets then decided to make a new proposal to the governments of the USA, UK and France to accept the participation of the USA in the proposed General European Agreement. Again all proposals, including the request to join NATO, were rejected by the UK, US, emblematic was the position of British General Hastings Ismay, supporter of NATO expansion, who said that NATO must grow until the whole free world gets under one umbrella. He opposed the request to join NATO made by the USSR in 1954 saying that the Soviet request to join NATO is like an unrepentant burglar requesting to join the police force, in April 1954 Adenauer made his first visit to the USA meeting Nixon, Eisenhower and Dulles. Ratification of EDC was delaying but the US representatives made it clear to Adenauer that EDC would have to become a part of NATO, memories of the Nazi occupation were still strong, and the rearmament of Germany was feared by France too

46.
World Federation of Trade Unions
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The World Federation of Trade Unions was established in 1945 to replace the International Federation of Trade Unions. Its mission was to bring together trade unions across the world in a international organization. In the context of the Cold War, the WFTU was often portrayed as a Soviet front organization, a number of those unions, including those from Yugoslavia and China, left later when their governments had ideological differences with the Soviet Union. The WFTU declined as a result of the collapse of the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, in particular in Europe, the WFTU devotes much of its energy to organizing conferences, issuing statements and producing educational materials and courses for trade union leaders. In France, the CGT federation of food processing industry has maintained its affiliation with the WFTU, the CGT federation of Chemical industries sent delegates to the last congress in Athens in 2011. In 2013, two local CGT railway workers branches have taken steps to become affiliates with the WFTU, in Africa, unions of major importance such as COSATU in South Africa, have affiliated with the WFTU. The WFTU holds consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, the ILO, UNESCO, FAO and it maintains permanent missions in New York, Geneva, and Rome. The TUI system has gone through a number of transformations in its over 60 years of existence, the following Trade Unions Internationals are constituted within the WFTU. During the late 1940s, the WFTU unsuccessfully tried to reach an agreement with existing international trade secretariats. When the Union split in 1949 they were left without an organization at the level of specific industries, therefore, they created the, World Federation of Teachers Unions – known by its French acronym FISE, this is the earliest affiliated union, founded in 1946. It maintained a degree of independence from the WFTU not exercised by the other TUIs, in 1949, the 2nd World Congress decided to create a series of sectoral unions, after their negotiations with already existing international trade secretariats failed. At first these were known as Trade Departments or International Federations, the original TUIs formed in 1949 and 1950 were, The WFTU functioned during the Cold War largely as a front organization, bringing together unions and western unions. By 1985, this union had adopted its present name, Trade Unions International of Transport Workers, in 1954 the TUI of Chemical and Allied Workers expanded its sectoral base and became the Trade Unions International of Chemical, Oil and Allied Workers. In 1958 the TUIs of Leather, Shoe, Fur and Leather Products and of Textile and Clothing Workers merged to form the Trade Union International of Textile, Leather, in 1983 the TUI of Miners expanded its scope and became the Trade Unions International of Miners and Energy Workers. In 1986 it became the Trade Unions International of Energy Workers before ceasing activities, after the dissolution of the Eastern bloc, the Trade Unions International of Energy Workers and the Trade Union International of Metal and Engineering Workers temporarily suspended operations. This organization was reorganized again as the Trade Unions International of Energy Workers in 2007 and this left the metal workers an opportunity create a new TUI the next year, Trade Union International of Workers in the Mining, the Metallurgy and the Metal Industries. L. Mahendra 2005, Shaban Assouz 2016, Michael Mzwandile Makwayiba List of federations of trade unions List of trade unions Fabio BERTINI, kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Martin P. Catherwood Library, Cornell University

World Federation of Trade Unions
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World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU)

47.
World Federation of Democratic Youth
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The World Federation of Democratic Youth is an international youth organization, recognized by the United Nations as an international youth non-governmental organization. WFDY describes itself as an anti-imperialist, left-wing organization, the WFDY Headquarters are in Budapest, Hungary. The main event of WFDY is the World Festival of Youth, the last festival was successfully held in Quito, Ecuador, in December 2013. It was one of the first organizations granted general consultative status with the United Nations Economic, on November 10,1945, the World Youth Conference, organized in London, founded the World Federation of Democratic Youth. This historic conference was convened at the initiative of the World Youth Council which was formed during World War II to encourage the fight against fascism by the youth of the allied nations and it adopted a pledge for peace. Shortly after, with the onset of the Cold War and Winston Churchills Iron Curtain speech, many of the founding organizations quit, leaving mostly youth from socialist nations, national liberation movements, and communist youth. The WFYDs first General Secretary, Alexander Shelepin, was a leader of the Young Communist International which had been dissolved in 1943. Shelepin had been a fighter during World War II. Both the WFDY and IUS vocally criticized the Marshall Plan, supported the Czechoslovak coup détat of 1948, the main event of the WFDY became the World Festival of Youth and Students, a massive political and cultural celebration for peace and friendship between the youth of the world. Most, but not all, of the festivals were held in socialist nations in Europe. Famous people who participated in festivals included Angela Davis, Yuri Gagarin, Yasser Arafat, Fidel Castro, Ruth First, when the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc collapsed, the WFDY entered a crisis. With the power left by the collapse of the most important member organization. Some wanted a more structure, whereas others were more inclined to an openly leftist federation. The WFDY, however, survived this crisis, and is today an international youth organization that holds regular activities

World Federation of Democratic Youth
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Guy de Boisson, President of the World Federation of Democratic Youth, speaks at the opening of the 2nd World Festival of Youth and Students (Budapest, 1949).
World Federation of Democratic Youth
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The WFDY symbol.